Teaching about Victimization in the #MeToo Era: Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

This introduction to the special issue of Journal of Criminal Justice Education titled Teaching About Victimization in the #MeToo Era focuses on the justification for the special issue and provides an overview of the included articles. The #MeToo social movement, changes in college campus policies and procedures (e.g. Title IX), and social and political unrest in the larger community (e.g. Black Lives Matter, the Insurrection), and the COVID pandemic have inevitably changed students and faculty personally, as well as impacted teaching both in the classroom and online. The articles in the special issue provide faculty with an opportunity to think about their teaching about victimization, including providing specific approaches to adopt or build upon. The introduction concludes with recommendations for how to elevate the importance of pedagogical work done by faculty.

Keywords:

• Teaching
• victimization
• #MeToo
• pedagogy
• Title IX

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lisa Growette Bostaph

Lisa M. Growette Bostaph is a Professor of Criminal Justice at Boise State University. She received her Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the University of Cincinnati. She has been working in the field of victimization for 28 years, starting her career at the Duluth Domestic Abuse Intervention Project in Duluth, MN. Dr. Bostaph was also the founder of Project P.E.A.C.E, a crime scene crisis intervention project for four suburbs of Minneapolis, MN serving victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse. Dr. Bostaph's research focuses on police decision-making, criminal justice system response to victimization, and criminal justice education. She is currently working on two multi-year projects: a series of biennial reports on victimization and victim services in Idaho and another examining the prevalence, incidence, and systemic response to the victimization of people with disabilities.

Alison C. Cares

Alison C. Cares, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Sociology and a member of the Violence Against Women Cluster at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida, U.S. Her career in the efforts to end violence against women started over 20 years ago as a community educator in a sexual assault and domestic violence services agency. Dr. Cares' research focuses on violence against women, primarily intimate partner violence and campus sexual assault. Her recent work has appeared in Journal of Criminal Justice Education, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Violence & Victims, and Violence Against Women. She enjoys teaching undergraduate and graduate courses including victimology, sexual violence, domestic violence, and research methods.

Bonnie S. Fisher

Bonnie S. Fisher is a Distinguish Research Professor in the School of Criminal Justice (SCJ) at the University of Cincinnati. Her research interests span victimological topics ranging from the measurement and estimate of interpersonal violence against college students to the identification of theory-based predictors of interpersonal victimization to understanding state-level regulation of campus conceal carry laws, and most recently, to the design and implementation of a longitudinal study of interpersonal violence against and by emerging adults. During her career, she has published articles in Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Journal of Interpersonal Violence and Violence Against Women. She was the Co-P I, with David Cantor, on the 2015 and 2019 Association of American University's Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Misconduct and a consultant, with Professor Sandy Martin, on the University of Hawai´i's 2017, 2019, and 2021 Student Climate Survey on Sexual Harassment and Gender-Based Violence. Since 2018, she, along with the UC SCJ team, has partnered with a local non-for-profit organization, Women Helping Women, to evaluate their Domestic Violence Enhanced Response Team (DVERT). Annually she teaches an undergraduate course in victimology and a graduate-level Seminar in Victimology—hence her interest in the use of trigger warnings.