The Legacy & Futures of Feminist (Legal) Theory (K. Abr*ms, H. Ker*n)

This course is organized as a demonstration of the vitality and importance of feminist work done across a variety of disciplines—much, though not all, of it related to law and public policy--that is intended to affect the welfare of women, through instrumental engagement with the quality and status of their lives. It aims to foster a generous, comparative, and critical appraisal of several areas in which feminist thought has made transformative contributions, and in which its trajectory has the potential to move us in exciting and potentially controversial directions. These areas include women’s citizenship (political, social, cultural), autonomy (as viewed through the lens of surrogacy) and efforts (in domestic and global settings) to secure economic justice. We will enter these debates over both conceptualization and implementation by reading what several salient contributors have to say. To endow each such subject with a reasonable period for reading, reflection, analysis, discussion and the potential for additional research, each topic within the seminar will be pursued within a unit of approximately three weeks.

The seminar will be offered jointly by Professor Jane Cohen for students of the U.T. School of Law and by Professor Kathy Abrams, for students at Boalt Hall School of Law. The seminar’s meetings will take place simultaneously on both campuses and will be telecast to the two classes simultaneously over a global satellite hook-up. Because Boalt Hall cannot accommodate a global satellite hook-up, Boalt students will meet each week in a classroom in Dwinelle Hall (on the main campus) which has this capacity.

This is a writing seminar. Students will write a paper or papers in lieu of taking an exam. Both professors will encourage participants to engage with members of the group who attend the “other” school, for purposes that not only include discussion in and outside of class, but research and writing, as well.