Challenging Despair: Teaching About Women’s Resistance to Violence

In this article, the author describes an approach to teaching about violence against women that balances discussion of violence with information about women’s individual and collective resistance. This strategy addresses two concerns about traditional approaches to this topic: that focusing only on victimization disempowers students and that it provides only a partial view of the reality of violence in women’s lives. To address these problems, the author integrates discussion of resistance into the class’s working definition of violence, assigned readings, guest speakers, and course assignments. The author concludes with a discussion of the positive effects of this approach.