Gabriela Torres

M. Gabriela Torres

Professor and William Isaac Cole Chair in Anthropology, Associate Provost for Academic Administration and Faculty Affairs, Wheaton College

About M. Gabriela

Torres' research focuses on the relationship between the state and gender based violence. Overarching themes in Torres' writings include the role of sexual violence in genocide, how state and institutional policy enable different forms of sexual violence, and how the harms of sexual violence are conceptualized cross-culturally. Torres serves as the Ombudsperson for Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault for the American Anthropological Association, a minority representative in the American Anthropological Association's Member's Programmatic Advisory and Advocacy Committee, and is past president of the New England Council on Latin American Studies.

Contributions

The Change Higher Education Needs Today

  • M. Gabriela Torres
  • Melva Trevino

In the News

"The Change Higher Education Needs Today," M. Gabriela Torres (with Irene Mata and Melva Treviño), Inside Higher Ed, May 13, 2022.
"Making the Leap From the Traditional to the Virtual Educational Experience," M. Gabriela Torres (with Claire Buck and Cary Gouldin), New England Board Higher Education, March 24, 2020.
"How To Transition (Quickly) to Online Instruction," M. Gabriela Torres (with Claire Buck and Cary Gouldin), UB University Business, March 20, 2020.
M. Gabriela Torres quoted by Beth McCurie, "The Coronavirus Has Pushed Courses Online. Professors Are Trying Hard to Keep Up." The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 20, 2020.
"Gender-Based Violence and the Plight of Guatemalan Refugees," M. Gabriela Torres, Cultural Anthropology, January 23, 2019.

Publications

"Reporting Is Not Supporting: Why Mandatory Supporting, Not Mandatory Reporting, Must Guide University Sexual Misconduct Policies" (with Kathryn J. Holland, Elizabeth Q. Hutchison, and Courtney E. Ahrens). PNAS 118, no. 52 (2021).

Proposes alternative reporting policies based on current research that will better support survivors.

"Rules Matter: How Can Professional Associations Remap Intracommunity Norms Around Sexual Violence?" (with Dianna Shandy). Signs: Journal of Women Culture and Society 47, no. 1 (2021).

Describes and analyzes the American Anthropological Association’s adoption of a sexual harassment and sexual assault policy as a part of the groundswell of recognition that sexual violence detrimentally shapes scientific inquiry, a recognition catalyzed by the #MeToo cultural moment.

Sexual Violence in Intimacy (edited with Kersti Yllö) (Routledge, 2020).

Provides much needed scholarship to guide policymakers, practitioners, and activists as well as for researchers studying gender-based violence, marriage, and kinship, and the legal and public health concerns of women globally.

"Gender-Based Violence and the Plight of Guatemalan Refugees" Cultural Anthropology (2019).

Traces the gender-based violence continuum that begins in a refugee's country of origin focusing on Guatemalan women. Suggests that we must pay careful attention to continuing forms of gender based violence that take place in transit and in the countries where refugees seek refuge.

"Violated Women, Reason, and Lo Político in the Imaginary of the Guatemalan Nation" Bulletin of Latin American Research 37, no. 3 (July 2018): 261-274.

Explores how political violence is imagined with women's bodies and suggests that such violence is always built on pre‐existing cultural practices. Argues that gender categorization is paramount to constructing a modern Guatemalan nation that all too often works to exclude women as knowing participants.

"State Violence" in Cambridge Handbook of Social Problems, edited by Javier Treviño (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Provides a guide to the literature on state violence using the much studied case of Guatemala as a focal example. Presents competing concepts on the nature of violence, analyzes the different forms of state violence (genocide, political violence, and juridical violence). Suggests emerging trends in the literature of state violence that lead us to consider structural inequalities, the changing nature of the state, and the incorporation of new technologies of violent governance.

"Engendering Violence: Military Leadership through the Moral Crisis of Guatemala’s National Family" in Violence and Crime in Latin America: Representations and Politics, edited by Gemma Santamaria and David Carey Jr. (Oklahoma University Press, 2017), 61-79.

Examines a period of dictatorial rule in Guatemala, and the way in which the state expressed itself in terms of paternal love and family affection.

Marital Rape: Consent, Marriage, and Social Change in Global Context (edited with Kersti Yllö) (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Examines, with leading scholars, marital rape as a global problem with documented health and policy consequences globally.

"Gender Based Violence and the State in Guatemala’s Genocide and Beyond" in Applying Anthropology to Gender-Based Violence, edited by Jennifer Wies and Hillary Haldane (Lexington Books, 2015).
"In the Shadow of the Razor Wire: Class and Insecurity in Guatemala’s Urban Core" Anthropologica 57, no. 1 (2015): 127-137.

Explores how the usage of razor wiring in Guatemalan homes connects to a larger view about the relationship of outsiders to the home, and neoliberal reforms within the country.

"Art and Labor in the Framing of Guatemala's Dead" Anthropology of Work Review 35, no. 1 (July 2014): 14-24.

Examines how photojournalists used photos of Guatemala's violence to craft aesthetic narratives, and to balance depicting atrocity with artistic considerations.

"Precursors to Femicide: Guatemalan Women in a Vortex of Violence" (with David Carey Jr.). Latin American Research Review 45, no. 3 (2010): 142-164.

Finds the naturalization of gender-based violence over the course of the twentieth century maintained and promoted the systemic impunity that undergirds femicide today. Accounts for the gendered and historical dimensions of the cultural practices of violence and impunity. Offers a re-conceptualization of the social relations that perpetuate femicide as an expression of post-war violence.