Research

Introduction to the suite: violence against women and girls and the education of voice

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 59, Issue 3-4, June-August 2025, Pages 746–750

Abstract

This article introduces a suite of articles on ‘Violence Against Women and Girls and the Education of Voice’. The suite developed from a one-day conference funded by the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain’s Development Committee. The aim of the suite is not to resolve or settle the problem of violence against women and girls, but rather to acknowledge the difficulties of thinking about sexual violence and to dwell within this difficulty. To do this, we turn to work in the humanities, drawing together four articles that examine questions of sexual violence through history, drama, literature, and philosophical thinking. A theme that echoes through the articles is that of the voice, and the education of voice. As this introduction and the ensuing articles will demonstrate, issues of language—of voice and silence, listening and refusal, harm and denial—are of central importance. Yet these are also at risk of being distorted in the more prominent ways that society is responding to sexual violence. This distortion extends, notably, to ways sexual violence is being responded to in schools and other institutions. For the articles in this suite, education is not to be understood simply as a means of ending sexual violence; and much is lost when we do think in such instrumental terms. Rather, here, the ‘education of voice’ that we propose requires remaining with the space that violence opens and attending to what that space may yet demand of us.

Link to full article: https://academic.oup.com/jope/article-abstract/59/3-4/746/8117843\

Education beyond the limits: addressing violence against women and girls Open Access

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 59, Issue 3-4, June-August 2025, Pages 760–773

Abstract

This article is a contribution to a suite of articles on violence against women and girls. It sets out the context in which this issue is currently discussed, how it might be understood and how it can be addressed. Education is seen as a key mechanism for the prevention of gender-based violence through the transformation of the attitudes and beliefs that boys and young men hold about women and girls and what it means to be a man. This article considers the challenges of achieving this in the face of online influencers like Andrew Tate with their appeal to masculine entitlement and supremacy, often expressed in terms of misogynistic violence and coercion. Drawing on the work of Jacqueline Rose, Judith Butler, and others, the article argues that this is a task that involves creative and affective pedagogy as well as sustained critical engagement. There is, therefore, an important role for the arts and humanities in providing spaces for exploration, conversation, and reflection about the embodied experience of violence and abuse. Through difficult educational encounters it may be possible to initiate a change in boys and young men from impervious thoughtlessness to a greater recognition and understanding of the impact of harassment and violence, both within the educational setting and beyond.

Link to full article: https://academic.oup.com/jope/article/59/3-4/760/7852875 

Challenging persistent rape myths: an interview with Joanna Bourke

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 59, Issue 3-4, June-August 2025, Pages 751–759

Abstract

Joanna Bourke is a prize-winning social and cultural historian, a Fellow of the British Academy, and a public intellectual. Her books, which have been translated into multiple languages, have explored the history of gender, working-class culture, emotions, war, and the relationships between animals and humans. Her most recent books are Birkbeck: 200 Years of Radical Learning for Working People (Oxford University Press, 2022) and Disgrace: Global Reflections on Sexual Violence (Reaktion Books, 2022). The latter was written as part of her Wellcome Trust-funded project SHaME (Sexual Harms and Medical Encounters), of which she is the Principal Investigator. Her book Five Evil Women will be published by Reaktion Books in January 2026. Philosopher of education Rowena Azada-Palacios spoke to Joanna Bourke about how historical approaches can help us understand and find solutions to present-day issues of sexual violence.

Link to article: https://academic.oup.com/jope/article-abstract/59/3-4/751/8139089?redirectedFrom=fulltext 

‘Your days are over Casanova’: sexual violence, education and the ethics of literature in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace Open Access

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 59, Issue 3-4, June-August 2025, Pages 774–790

 Abstract

This article explores literature as a means for understanding the nature and implications of violence against women. In particular, it seeks to illustrate the ways a literary work can deepen and complexify discussions of violence against women, and its enabling conditions, within an individual and broader society. The work to be examined is J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, and I focus on a particular aspect of the novel—viz. the affair, and the aftermath of the affair, between middle-aged communications professor, David Lurie, and a student from his Romantic poetry class, Melanie Isaacs. I show how the Lurie–Melanie episode links sexual violence to bureaucratic, disenchanted, and intellectualistic ways of thinking. I also suggest that, in later parts of Disgrace, the possibilities for other attitudes—to sex and to education—are glimpsed. That we glimpse these through the figure of David Lurie—who at the start of the novel believes he has ‘solved’ the problem of sex—makes Coetzee’s novel a particularly interesting case study for considering the education of literature in a time of sexual violence.

Link to full article: https://academic.oup.com/jope/article/59/3-4/774/8129010

‘WOMEN SPEAK OUT’: Coetzee’s Disgrace and the education of voice Open Access

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 59, Issue 3-4, June-August 2025, Pages 791–806

Abstract

In this article, I explore an aspect of J. M. Coetzee’s novel Disgrace. The novel deals with the complexity of post-apartheid South Africa, in which violence, inequality, and poverty are part of the everyday lives of the people. The central character of the novel is David Lurie, a university professor of English Literature whose specialism is Romanticism but who is disillusioned with the higher education system he now finds himself in. The aspect of the novel I wish to focus on, however, turns the attention more towards his daughter Lucy. A key event in the novel is the gang rape of Lucy, which is partially witnessed by her father. Lucy remains silent about her rape and, when questioned by her father, refers to it as a ‘purely private matter’. As it happens, Lurie himself has been charged with sexually assaulting one of his students. In my discussion, I will examine how Lucy’s silence should be viewed in the light of movements such as ‘Speak Out’, which see speech primarily in terms of political efficacy. While I do not doubt the value of these forms of activism in some respects, I point out their limitations and risks: they may oversimplify the situation and hide ethical responsibilities. I will point out how Lucy, in her silence, resists Lurie’s adoption of the dominant narrative by opening up the possibility of seeing language differently. Speech is to be understood not primarily as a matter of the representation of a state of affairs, but more fundamentally in terms of ethical human relationships with others.

Link to full article: https://academic.oup.com/jope/article/59/3-4/791/8120479