ONLINE: Michelle Bowdler

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press release: Award-winning writer and public health executive Michelle Bowdler's memoir Is Rape a Crime? indicts how sexual violence has been addressed for decades in our society, asking whether rape is a crime given that it is the least reported major felony, least successfully prosecuted, and fewer than 3% of reported rapes result in conviction. Cases are closed before they are investigated and DNA evidence sits for years untested and disregarded. Rape in this country is not treated as a crime of brutal violence but as a parlor game of he said / she said. Given all this, it seems fair to ask whether rape is actually a crime. In 1984, the Boston Sexual Assault Unit was formed as a result of a series of break-ins and rapes that terrorized the city, of which Michelle’s own horrific rape was the last. Twenty years later, after a career of working with victims like herself, Michelle decides to find out what happened to her case and why she never heard from the police again after one brief interview.

Michelle Bowdler is the executive director of Health & Wellness at Tufts University and a graduate of the Harvard School of Public Health. She is a recipient of a 2017 Barbara Deming Memorial Award and has been a Fellow at Ragdale and the MacDowell Colony. Bowdler’s writing has been published in the New York Times and has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes.

Finn Enke is professor of History, Gender and Women’s Studies, and LGBTQ+ Studies at University of Wisconsin, Madison.