The concept of rape culture in higher education has come under increasingly close media scrutiny at local, state, and national levels. In this chapter, against a background of heightened awareness and of renewed conversation about campus sexual assault, I would like to frame a discussion of the Middle High German Nibelungenlied. I argue that this frame offers an unexpected perspective for reading the Nibelungenlied in the context of teaching rape and medieval literature, providing a unique opportunity to create dialogue between thirteenthcentury texts and twentyfirstcentury students/ readers. The Nibelungenlied is, of course, a wonderfully complex work with an equally complicated reception history from the Middle Ages to the present. As a work of Middle High German courtly literature, it also undeniably participates in the rape narrative that Kathryn Gravdal established as integral to medieval romance. The thirteenthcentury text has one episode in particular that offers a direct and immediate connection to issues of concern on a twentyfirstcentury college campus: the tenth adventure. The tenth adventure describes the double wedding of Burgundian king Gunther and his sister Kriemhild (to Brunhild and Siegfried respectively). This adventure can easily be read by modern undergraduates as a very humorous scene. The muchanticipated bridal night proves challenging for Gunther when his new bride Brunhild unceremoniously hangs him from a nail on the wall of their bedchamber and leaves him there until dawn. The next night, Gunther's new brotherinlaw Siegfried dons his cape of invisibility and comes to Gunther's aid, duelling with Brunhild in the king's bedchamber while the king listens under the bed. Siegfried defeats Brunhild and leaves, Gunther takes his place, and the episode ends without further incident.

The audience, medieval or modern, can scarcely deny the humour of a newly married king ignominiously hanging on the wall, bound hand and foot by his bride on their first night together, pleading to be released. The audience is likewise intended to find humour in the king's request for help from his best friend and new brotherinlaw to subdue his bride. The second night's wrestling match between Siegfried and Brunhild, however, “resolves” the hitherto slapstick comedy through a violent act of physical force that modern students clearly identify as rape