Perpetuating Discourse: Representations of Intimate Partner Violence and the Victimized Female Body

• In Event: 109 - Student Forum Roundtable Session.
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02.

Abstract

The research that I am presenting is based on my honours research project, which I will be completing over the next few months. For this project, I am investigating if and how women’s bodies are being represented as the objects of intimate partner violence within two intimate partner violence prevention programs in Calgary. I will be conducting analysis on public documents made available by the Calgary Women’s Emergency Shelter and the YWCA Sheriff King Home in order to understand the underlying power dynamics evident in how women’s bodies are represented and therefore constructed. By uncovering the ways in which women are being represented within these public documents, I argue that these portrayals construct such women as necessarily victimizable, thereby contradicting the implicit goal of these prevention programs.

Author

• Alyssa Nicole Hartwell, Mount Royal University