The Work of Rape

“Imaginative and deeply ambitious, The Work of Rape upends conventional thinking. Traversing a vast terrain, Rana M. Jaleel insists we turn from how rape has been problematically framed through various feminist legal efforts so we may reconceptualize its relation to racial and colonial world orderings of life. A brilliant and convincing book.” - Leti Volpp, Robert D. and Leslie Kay Raven Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley

“Rana M. Jaleel presents an eye-opening and mesmerizing global account of the contexts, significations, and meanings that rape as a juridical offense and cultural term has undergone from the 1990s to the present. She boldly intervenes into current discussions about rectifying the pervasiveness of societal sexual violence that has been reignited by movements like #TimesUp and #MeToo. One walks away from this book with new clarity about the substantive differences and stakes among women of color, Indigenous, queer, and radical feminist frameworks for understanding sexual violence and for acting against it. This is the book I’ve wanted for these times.” - Chandan Reddy, author of Freedom with Violence: Race, Sexuality, and the US State

"Recommended. Graduate students and faculty." - J. Wies, Choice

"The Work of Rape is a challenging text, but one that asks us to think deeply and seriously about feminist and queer theory, sexual violence, racialization, and the politics of rape." - Sameena Mulla, GLQ

"The Work of Rape provides an insightful examination of the past 40 years of international legal recognition of forms of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) as a type of genocide and torture. ... [Jaleel's] book meaningfully challenges our overemphasis on international feminist efforts as inherently victorious and pushes us to do the much more difficult work of examining the deeper political struggles being articulated through the legal definition and prosecution of rape."