Last week the University of South Carolina School hosted Martha Nussbaum as our 2006 Knowlton Lecturer and she was terrific. She gave an outstanding public lecture on “Radical Evil in the Lockean State: The Neglect of the Political Emotions”, taught a course for our law students, and then gave a wonderful interdisciplinary faculty seminar. During the course of these events, she fielded a very wide array of complicated and occasionally regrettably hostile queries about her work and views with an amazing amount of energy, grace and good humour.
It was during the articulation one very long and convoluted filibuster-in-the-guise-of-a-question that my mind started to wander a bit, and it suddenly occurred to me how many cool feminist legal academics are named Martha: In addition to Martha Nussbaum, there is Martha Minow, Martha Fineman, Martha Ertman, Martha Chamallas, Martha Shaffer, Martha Davis, Martha Morgan, etc. etc. etc. (This list is not intended to be exhaustive; feel free to add yourself or a Martha friend in the comments if you like). This strikes me as a little odd, because outside of academic circles, I don’t know many women named Martha (nor any men whatsoever, come to think of it).
NB: One could compile quite an impressive list of cool feminist legal acadmics named Kathryn/Katherine/Katharine/Catherine/Catharine too if one had a lot of free time.
–Ann Bartow
