Rewriting the History of Sexual Assault in the Age of #MeToo

The #MeToo movements is now over a year old, but over the past few months its stakes have become increasingly clear, not only in American culture and politics but also in many of our intellectual lives as historians. This talk considers how the rallying call "believe women" challenges our epistemology and might lead us to a different approach to our evidence. The sources are drawn from an early nineteeth-century Buddist temple in rural Japan, but the problem they present is familiar to both historians and feminist activists: sexual assault often causes a rupture or fracturing of convential narrative. What do we do with the silences and changing accounts? Which stories do we tell? And, ultimately, who do we believe? Dr. Amy Stanley is an associate professor in the Department of History at Northwestern University. Sponsored by the Japanese Program of the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, the Center for East Asian Studies, and the Department of Women's Studies University of Maryland, College Park.