In a 48-hour span in mid-October 2017, nearly 1 million women shared the words “Me too” on social media. Those two words brought a new level of visibility to the perennial problem of sexual harassment, assault and rape in women’s lives.
These issues take centerstage as author and academic Leigh Gilmore delivers the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s 2018 Knoll Lecture, 5:30 p.m. March 6 in Sheldon Museum of Art.
Gilmore’s talk will explore the history of the #MeToo movement and pose questions about the testimonial trajectories of women’s accounts of harm in today’s climate. She will examine the histories underlying the #MeToo movement and pose questions about the testimonial trajectories (actual and potential) of women’s accounts of harm in a public sphere primed to doubt and discredit them.
Gilmore will consider how two strands of justice-seeking narratives — confession and testimony — inform the #MeToo movement and how the entangling of these discourses helps to account for current concerns about due process and potential false accusations.
Gilmore is the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. She has also served as chair of gender and women’s studies at Scripps College and as a professor of English at Ohio State University. She has held visiting appointments at Brown University, Harvard Divinity School, Northeastern University, University of California, Santa Cruz and University of California, Berkeley.
Her books include “The Limits of Autobiography: Trauma and Testimony” and “Autobiographics: A Feminist Theory of Women’s Self-Representation.”
The Robert E. Knoll lecture series honors Professor Robert Knoll, D.B. and Paula Varner Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus, for extraordinary service to the university and community. The annual lectures given by distinguished visiting scholars are free and open to the public.
