The Association for the Study of African American Life and History announced earlier this year that for 2012, the theme is “Black Women in American Culture and History.”  Here is an excerpt from the group’s announcement of the theme:

From the American Revolution to the present, African American women have played a myriad of critical roles in the making of our nation.  Their labor and leadership, their motherhood and patriotism, and their intellect and artistic expression have all enriched both the African American community and the nation at large.  In slavery and freedom, their struggles have been at the heart of the human experience, and their triumps over racism and sexism are a testimonial to our common human spirit.

Planned future themes are: (for 2013) “The 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation;”  (for 2014) “The Golden Jubilee of the Civil Rights Act;” and (for 2015) “A Century of Black Life, History and Culture.”

For more info, see here.

The image above is from diversitystore.com and features these women:

We need a poster of African-American women in law.  Let’s start with Sadie Alexander, Jane Matilda Bolin, Yvonne Burke,  Inez C. Fields, Ruth Cavers Flowers, Jacqueline Guild Lutie Lytle, Constance Baker Motley, Jane Cleo Marshall, Pauli Murray, Rachel E. Pruden-Herndon, Charlotte Ray and Lucia Theodosia Thomas.  And that’s not even venturing fully into the second half of the twentieth century.

-Bridget Crawford

Feminist Law Professors

Jo B. Paoletti (American Studies, Maryland) tells the history in Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America, published last month by Indiana University Press.  The book’s webpage has a slide show of greeting cards from 1960, when pink and blue were less gender-specific, Dr. Paoletti suggests.

Slideshow source here.

-Bridget Crawford

Feminist Law Professors

Yesterday’s Chronicle includes an article Faculty Union Calls on U. at Buffalo to Cut Ties to Chambers of Commerce that mentions Feminist Law Professor Martha McCluskey.   Journalist Peter Schmidt writes:

Opening a new front in the conflict between college labor unions and conservative advocacy groups, the University at Buffalo’s faculty union has resolved to pressure the institution to sever its ties with state and local chambers of commerce.

* * *

The University at Buffalo pays annual dues of $5,000 to the Business Council of New York State and of nearly $48,000 to the Buffalo Niagara Partnership. The university’s president, Satish K. Tripathi, is a member of the board of directors of the regional organization, while Nancy L. Zimpher, the chancellor of the State University of New York System, is a nonvoting member of the state chamber’s board of directors.

* * *

In New York, Andrew J. Rudnick, the president of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, boasted in an August 2010 e-mail to its members that his organization had acquired a reputation as one of the most politically aggressive regional-business organizations in the nation. In that November’s elections, the group endorsed candidates for State Senate as part of an effort to help Republicans wrest control of that body from Democrats.

The Business Council of New York similarly endorsed a slate of Republican candidates in the 2010 State Senate races. Last year it listed among its lobbying priorities limiting annual increases in state spending and hiring, as well as a long list of other fiscally conservative and business-oriented causes.

 * * *

Among those who advocated on behalf of the referendum, Martha T. McCluskey, a professor of law, argued in a statement that the measure promotes transparency and independence in the university’s political activities. The chambers of commerce, she added, “should not use public university resources or [the University at Buffalo's] name and prestige to promote external private political interests.”

Read the full article here.

Professor McCluskey welcomes hearing from law faculty with expertise on any of the legal issues involved.  Her email is mcclusk@buffalo.edu

-Bridget Crawford

Feminist Law Professors

Staceyann Chin responds with poetry: “I am never any one thing or the other….”

-Bridget Crawford

Feminist Law Professors

The Institute of Women’s Studies at the University of Ottawa is inviting applications for its Bank of Montreal Visiting Scholar in Women’s Studies for 2012-2013. The purpose of this fund is to attract highly qualified researchers working on women’s issues. The Visiting Scholar’s stay should be from three (3) to six (6) months within the university’s academic year, from September to April. The recipient will receive a maximum of $3,000 which may be used to supplement research and/or travel expenses. Scholars with alternative funding will be considered. The Visiting Scholar will be required to present her ongoing research project in conferences and/or seminars and to interact with the community of students and colleagues. Additional information will be provided on request.

The Institute of Women’s Studies invites applications from Canadian and non-Canadian scholars, both tenured and untenured faculty, and from post-doctoral, independent scholars who are pursuing critical feminist research. Individuals must have a Ph.D. to be considered for this position.

Applications should include a curriculum vitae, a detailed statement of the research project, copies of recent publications, the dates of the proposed stay at the University of Ottawa and the names of two referees.

Please forward to:

Selection Committee
Bank of Montreal Visiting Scholar in Women’s Studies
Institute of Women’s Studies, University of Ottawa
30 Stewart, room 101, Ottawa, Ontario, KIN 6N5 Canada
Telephone : (613) 562-5791
Fax : (613) 562-5994
E-mail : mcharbo@uOttawa.ca

The NEW closing date for submitting applications is 29 February 2012.

For more information, please consult the website here.

-Bridget Crawford

Feminist Law Professors

Writer Ryan O’Connell asks What’s the Deal with Misogynistic Gay Men? over here at Thought Catalog.  And he’s not even talking about the gay men who overtly don’t like women (don’t want to work with them, socialize with them, etc.).  O’Connell is talking about gay men who like to be surrounded by women.  Here’s an excerpt:

I don’t understand gay men who hate women. Most of them aren’t even aware of their hatred, which makes it difficult to acknowledge and discuss the misogyny. They actually believe that they adore them. “OMG, can’t go anywhere without my girls! What would I do without them!” But, in reality, they’re used as punching bags. They tease them mercilessly and cut down their appearance while the friend just sits back and laughs, clearly uncomfortable by the insults but used to the unhealthy dynamic by now. * * *

What frustrates me is how socially acceptable it is for gay men to treat women like crap. People assume that just because you don’t want to get into a woman’s pants, you’re inherently a feminist. But, what do you know, that’s not true. There are a myriad of ways to disrespect women that don’t involve ploys to get them into bed. Calling them bitches and whores as a “joke” is one of them. (Seriously, hearing a drunk gay man scream and shout to their girlfriend, “You’re such a filthy whore!” is like nails on a chalkboard to me. I just can’t.)

Read the full post here.

This a topic that I haven’t seen much written about, and isn’t discussed all that openly, at least among my feminist friends and colleagues.  Is feminist silence motivated by a misplaced sense of solidarity?  Or are women not too eager to throw stones?  After all, women — even feminist women — aren’t immune from woman-hating.  But then again, misogyny is easer to spot in others than in ourselves.

-Bridget Crawford

Feminist Law Professors

This workshop, the fifth meeting of ClassCrits, takes on class and the American dream as its theme. The most quintessentially American trait may be our capacity to look past current misfortune and imagine a brighter future.  Americans love a “rags to riches” story and have long believed that hard work and determination will pay off in the long run. Two years into a sluggish “recovery” from the Great Recession, however, many Americans have lost some of that earnest optimism. Faced with persistent unemployment, a nationwide foreclosure crisis, deep cuts to state and local budgets, and declining state support for public education, Americans are questioning the promise of upward mobility. Indeed falling backwards is now a recognized phenomenon affecting more and more of the “middle class,” arguably blurring the distinctions between the “middle class,” the “working classes” and “the poor.” But roused by economic insecurity and the political assault on workers’ rights, “ordinary” people from Madison to Zuccotti Park have taken to the streets to voice their dissent. Taking on the slogan “we are the 99%,” the protest movement has launched a national dialogue about income, wealth and structural inequality, race, gender and class divisions in society, and, fundamentally, what it will take to reclaim our vision of a good life.  From Madison to Zuccotti Park: Confronting Class and Reclaiming the American Dream will therefore bring together scholars, economists, activists, policymakers, and others to critically examine both the relationships between and the complexities of class and inequality.

Conference organizers invite panel proposals and paper presentations that speak to this year’s theme as well as to general ClassCrits themes.

In addition, conference organizers extend a special invitation to junior scholars to submit proposals for works in progress. Each work in progress will be commented upon by a senior scholar as well as other scholars in a small, supportive working session.

Possible Topics:

•  Constructing & Deconstructing the 99%
• The Vanishing(ed) Middle-Class (family, housing, health care, education, income, employment, other)
• Social Mobility—Falling Backwards
• Gender Dynamics in Economic Downturns and Recoveries
• The Role of Women & Women’s Issues in Protest Movements
• Anti-Poverty Strategies
• Mapping a Way Forward (strategies for change in general)
• Political Failure (tax policy, immigration, labor & employment, welfare, other)
• Politics 2012–Political Opportunity?
• Structural Inequality (law, public health, education, other)
• Conscious and Unconscious Animus Against Poor People (immigration, criminalization, family, other)
• Spatial Inequality (segregation, rurality, surveillance)
• W(h)ither the Social Safety Net? (welfare, bankruptcy, housing, food, other)
• Class and Inequality: How are they different?
• Exploring the Racial & Inter-Racial Impacts of Economic Downturns and Poverty
• International Social & Economic Equality/Mobility (shared lessons and lessons to be learned)
• Human Rights or Civil Rights?
• The Great Tech Divide (in terms of race, gender, class, location [suburbs, cities, rural areas])

In addition, conference organizers invite panel proposals that speak to the general themes of ClassCrits, including:

•  The legal and cultural project of constructing inequalities of all kinds as natural, normal, and necessary
• The relationships among economic, racial, and gender inequality
• The development of new methods with which to analyze and criticize economics and law (beyond traditional “law and economics”)
• The relationship between material systems and institutions and cultural systems and institutions.

ClassCrits is a network of scholars and activists interested in critical analysis of law and economic relations. The global economic crisis, along with growing economic inequality and insecurity, suggests it is time to explore alternatives to the neoclassical or “free market” economic paradigm, often identified with the U.S. “Law and Economics” movement. We aim to revive discussions of questions of class pushed to the margins or relegated to the shadowy past, considering the possible meaning and relevance of economic class to the contemporary context. We also hope to better integrate the rich diversity of economic methods and theories into law by exploring and engaging non-neoclassical and heterodox economics. The name “ClassCrits” reflects our interest in focusing on economics through the lens of critical legal scholarship movements, such as critical legal studies, critical feminist theory, critical race theory, LatCrit, and queer theory. That is, we start with the assumption that economics in law is inextricably political and fundamentally tied to questions of systemic status-based subordination.

LOGISTICS:

The venue for the gathering is The University of Wisconsin Law School. The workshop will begin with continental breakfast on Friday November 16 and continue through the afternoon of Saturday November 17.  Arrangements are being made for conference hotels. Please check our website www.classcrits.org for further updates or email the conference planners.

FEES:

Attendees are responsible for their own travel and lodging expenses.

CONFERENCE PLANNING COMMITTEE:  (Contact any member with Questions).

• Tonya Brito, The University of Wisconsin Law School, tlbrito@wisc.edu
• Martha McCluskey, University at Buffalo School of Law, mcclusk@buffalo.edu
• Ezra Rosser, American University, Washington College of Law, erosser@wcl.american.edu
• Angela Harris, UC Davis School of Law, apharris@ucdavis.edu
• Athena Mutua, University at Buffalo School of Law, admutua@buffalo.edu
• Teresa Miller, University at Buffalo School of Law, tmiller@buffalo.edu
• Danielle Kie Hart, Southwestern Law School, dhart@swlaw.edu
• Lucille Jewel, John Marshall Law School, ljewel@johnmarshall.edu
•  Brishen Rogers, Temple University, Beasley School of Law, brogers@temple.edu
• Lisa R. Pruitt, UC Davis School of Law, lrpruitt@ucdavis.edu
• Saru Matambanadzo, Tulane University Law School, smatamba@tulane.edu

DEADLINE:

Please submit your proposal by email to classcrits@gmail.com by February 17, 2012.

-Bridget Crawford

Feminist Law Professors

Out of an on-line colloquium organized by Kathy Abrams (I guess you had to be one of the cool kids to be invited; I don’t remember seeing a call), there’s the latest Issues in Legal Scholarship, with these fascinating contributions:

• Martha Chamallas, Backlash, Covering, and the State of Feminist Legal Theory
• Clare Huntington, Feminism’s Family
• Kathryn Abrams, Introduction: The Distinctive Energies of “Normal Science”
• Angela P. Harris, What Ever Happened to Feminist Legal Theory?
• Brenda Cossman, Where Did Feminism Go? Reflections from a Slightly Lapsed Feminist
• Herma Hill Kay, What I Learned About Feminism From the Early Women Law Professors
• Gowri Ramachandran, Pulling the Ladder Up Behind You: Feminism and Family
• Joan C. Williams, Tough Guise
• Berta Esperanza Hernandez-Truyol, On Que(e)rying Feminism: Reclaiming the F Word
• Marc Spindelman, Feminism Without Feminism
• Martha T. McCluskey, How Money for Legal Scholarship Disadvantages Feminism
• Katharine B. Silbaugh, Architecture of Legal Feminism

-Bridget Crawford

Feminist Law Professors

Brown girl in the ring

Tra la la la la

There’s a brown girl in the ring

Tra la la la la la la

Brown girl in the ring

Tra la la la la

She looks like a sugar in a plum

Plum plum

Show me your motion

Tra la la la la

Come on show me your motion

Tra la la la la la la

Show me your motion

Tra la la la la

She looks like a sugar in a plum

–Traditional Caribbean children’s song and game

A recent news article has me pondering national belonging in a big way.

A then 14-year-old United States born, non-Spanish speaking African American girl named Jakadrien Turner was erroneously deported to Colombia in 2010.   Ms. Turner was, according to news accounts, arrested for shoplifting in Houston, Texas. Though the facts are unclear, U.S. authorities assert that Turner identified herself as an undocumented alien from Colombia. Turner pled guilty to the shoplifting charges and was turned over to federal immigration authorities who sent her before an immigration magistrate where she was ordered deported.  Immigration and Customs Enforcement then asked the Colombian consulate to issue travel documents, which the consulate issued after interviewing the teenager.  Turner was then transported to Bogotá. Once in Colombia Turner was apparently given a work permit and released.  After an odyssey of over a year, Turner was recently reunited with her family in the United States.

In their defense, United States officials have suggested that Turner’s case is rare. However, the fact is that wrongful deportations are not as rare as is often asserted. It is probably the case that many hundreds of people, mostly people of color, are erroneously deported every year. Many of these deportations are of non-citizens whose deportations were based on improper grounds.  For many of these people, there is no remedy once they have been removed. There is no such barrier to return for American citizens who have been wrongfully deported, thankfully.  Still, wrongful deportation can be the source of numerous harms, and U.S. citizens are victims far more often than is typically imagined. According to an amicus brief filed by the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild in Castro v. United States, “the problem of detention and deportation of U.S. Citizens is so widespread that citizens may even be detained and deported on a daily basis.” According to a recent article by Jacqueline Stevens of Northwestern University, data suggests that since 2003 more than 20,000 United States citizens have been detained or deported as aliens

(read the rest of the post here)

-Lolita Buckner Inniss

(cross-post from Ain’t I a Feminist Legal Scholar, Too?)

Feminist Law Professors

Call for Papers 

“Social Justice Feminism”

University of Cincinnati College of Law

October 26-27, 2012

Keynote Speakers 

Patricia Hill Collins, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland; Charles Phelps Taft Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Cincinnati

 Anika Rahman, President and CEO of the Ms. Foundation for Women 

The University of Cincinnati College of Law’s Center for Race, Gender, and Social Justice seeks submissions for its upcoming 2012 conference “Social Justice Feminism.”  For more information about the conference, please click here.

What is Social Justice Feminism?  It is the type of work feminist activists on the ground say that they want to do.  This desire for “social justice feminism” (SJF) emerged from a three-years’ long conversation among women leaders from national groups, grassroots organizations, academia, and beyond (the New Women’s Movement Initiative) who gathered to address dissonance in the women’s movement, particularly dissatisfaction with the movement’s emphasis on women privileged on account of their race, class, or sexuality.  In 2010, Kristin Kalsem and Verna L. Williams of the University of Cincinnati College of Law published an article, “Social Justice Feminism,” that takes initial steps at broadly defining SJF as that which is productive, constructive, and healing.  Moving from practice to theory, it suggests a new way of articulating and understanding the feminist work that is being done in this current stage of feminist jurisprudence, after the path-breaking interventions of anti-essentialism and intersectionality.  The article also sets forth methodological tools for “doing social justice feminism.” 

“Social Justice Feminism” was written to advance the conversation that has already begun, both in the world of practice as evidenced by the work of the New Women’s Movement Initiative, as well as the world of feminist legal theory.  The upcoming conference  is intended to continue and expand the conversation.  We are seeking papers from academics who are interested in practice and activists who are interested in theory.  Possible panels include: 

• A social justice feminist approach to women and prison
• Critical Race Feminism and SJF
• The intersections of SJF and environmental justice
• History and reproductive justice
• New approaches to domestic violence activism
• SJF and criminal justice 

Deadline: April 1, 2012.  We invite submissions of abstracts for individual papers, as well as complete panels.  Send paper abstracts of no more that 500 words and a short biographical statement to lawsonmn@ucmail.uc.edu.  In the subject or “re” line of your submission, please type: SJF conference submission.  Include your full contact information, including an email, phone number, and mailing address where you can be reached.  We will notify presenters of selected papers by June 1, 2012.

If you have any questions, please contact Professor Kristin Kalsem at kristin.kalsem@uc.edu.

-Bridget Crawford

Feminist Law Professors