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Stop Being So Melodramatic! Or, the Problem with Sexual Harassment Policies
Author(s) -
Howlett Caitlin
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
educational theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.21
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1741-5446
pISSN - 0013-2004
DOI - 10.1111/edth.12355
Subject(s) - harassment , sociology , work (physics) , political science , criminology , law , engineering , mechanical engineering
In this article, Caitlin Howlett offers a critical framework for understanding the limits of prohibitive and individually oriented sexual harassment policies in academia through a discussion of melodrama. Howlett draws on the work of Linda Williams, Emma Goldman, and Carole Vance in arguing that such sexual harassment policies participate in melodrama and thus fail to address the structural or institutional conditions that allow for sexual harassment. She then turns to the work of Sara Ahmed to examine what is at stake in this failure, before concluding that this understanding of sexual harassment policies points to their insufficiency and inadequacy within the academy.