Alisa Kessel, "Rape Fantasies: Rape Culture and the Persistence of Sexual Violence" (Oxford UP, 2025)

In Conversation: An OUP Podcast · Apr 16, 2026 · 1h 9m

Political theorist Alisa Kessel (University of Puget Sound) has an important and impressive new book, Rape Fantasies: Rape Culture and the Persistence of Sexual Violence. Kessel’s research grew out of her work on questions of consent and how consent is embedded within the social contract structure. Initially the plan for the research was to critique this concept of “rape culture” which had found its way into popular discourse as well as academic work and was somewhat unclear in terms of application and understanding. Kessel notes in the book and in our conversations that her thinking about…