AustLit

'Published in the Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures Series with the assistance of an ARC Discovery Grant, Rethinking the Victim situates itself in the troubled context of violence against women, a broad field which includes family violence as well as many other forms. The authors refer to a range of major Reports, both international and Australian, into violence against women in all its manifestations, which detail horrifying statistics about its prevalence. In turn, that work recognises such violence as a human rights issue, with ‘widespread social, economic and political impact and effects.’ Anne Brewster and Sue Kossew also link increased contemporary attention to this field with the rise of feminist activism and theory in the 1970s, which brought the issue, particularly of domestic violence, from the private into the public sphere.' (Introduction)