ABSTRACT
How does one make sense out of sexual assault? Who tells what to whom and why? Who is responsible for telling, listening, believing, and taking the steps for preventing sexual assault in general, and in academic settings specifically? Drawing on the concept of the violence continuum developed by medical anthropologists, and with reference to anthropology’s own troubled history of failing to acknowledge violence in the discipline, this chapter explicates the various ways narratives of trauma from sexual violence take shape. It calls for academics — through their institutions — to make continuous, conscious efforts to combat structural, symbolic, institutional, and everyday violence.
