Peace education and principles of sexual violence prevention: An intersectional teaching paradigm

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Women, Cold War politics, and peace education: Challenging the paradigm

Proposal

This study compares national narratives on “peace” and “peacebuilding” from socialist Bulgaria, and capitalist Canada and the United States during the Cold War. It argues that under both state socialism and state neoliberalism, national and international educational frames of “peace” fail to recognize a paradox, mainly states promoting nuclear disarmament and peace between ideological capitalist and socialist rivals but failing to address the violence against women and gender and sexual minorities raging within their national borders. The burgeoning contemporary literature on gender and peacebuilding in war zones has not addressed that paradox fully, failing to imagine, test, and implement international and national educational curricula that rests upon the intersections between peace-focused education and sexual violence prevention education. The study offers a teaching and learning paradigm centered on these intersections that could be useful to educators in diverse countries and national educational contexts.

Author

• Miglena S. Todorova, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto