Climbing Above the Culture Clash

KS: The students were happy with it, and
I thought it was a great success. We had a
great line-up of speakers, and the students
worked incredibly hard. They gained
an understanding of a scholar’s process,
something traditional courses can’t deliver.
This is what we had hoped to accomplish.
Q: Who participated in last
semester’s course
LM: We had 15 students, including one
graduate student in political science. It was
mostly female students, but we had two male
students. Any professors who wanted to
attend were also welcome; we probably had
anywhere from two to five professors come to
each session.
Q: What was the format of the
colloquium
KS: We met with students the week before
the speaker would come, and we would
talk about the paper that was going to be
presented. Students were encouraged to think
about the author’s decision-making: both
decisions about focus, coverage and scope,
as well as how the particular paper fit into
the larger research agenda. During class,
students could engage the speaker about those
decisions.
LM: We would put the work in context, if
necessary — for example, we would explain
its connection to certain gender and law
debates or issues. We would give students a
chance to discuss the points they raised in
their weekly reaction papers. If we saw certain
common themes in the reaction papers, we
would invite the students to discuss them.
Q: How does this seminar add to
someone’s understanding of the law
LM: Examining the underlying assumptions
being made helps people better understand
the law and policy arguments. For example,
one of our speakers, Professor Elizabeth
Emens of Columbia University, was looking
at how people use arguments about nature,
either as a reason why we can’t really change
things or as a reason why we have to change
things. She explored disability, sexual
orientation, gender, race and aging. And I
think once students read that paper, it gave
them some new tools for thinking about how
people have certain assumptions about what
the proper role of law is.
Q: Who are some of the outside
speakers who have served as experts
for this colloquium, and how were
they selected
LM: We tried in the first instance to go with
some local people. We have a large number
of law schools in the Boston area, and we
also have some wonderful people here at
the University. We had the dean of the
College of Arts and Sciences, Gina Sapiro,
[who presented her paper “The Gender
Basis of American Social Policy.”] Other
speakers included Harvard Law School
Professor Jeannie Suk, who analyzed how
gender, privacy and the home feature in the
Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment cases,
and Northeastern Professor Martha Davis,
who presented her paper “Welfare, Work
and Education.” We also took advantage of
opportunities where a well-known scholar
was coming to the law school for another
reason and was willing to participate in
our colloquium. We will do that again this
semester when Professors Anita Allen [of
the University of Pennsylvania] and Kim
Scheppele [of Princeton] visit BU. Last
semester, we had Professor Reva Siegel, a
leading legal historian at Yale, present recent
work on how opponents of abortion have
adopted pro-choice rhetoric about women’s
rights to argue that abortion harms women.
[She also presented] a work in progress on
recovering the history of the early abortion
rights movement.
KS: We were trying to make sure that we
invited speakers with a range of different
expertise, so we looked for history, political
science, social policy and literature, for
example. We also wanted a variety of topic
coverage, so there were some scholars who
spoke about the lives of low-income women,
some about reproductive rights, some about
marriage, some about disability, some about
transgendered issues. … [Wellesley Professor]
Diana Williams talked about interracial
marriage during the Reconstruction period in
New Orleans and the laws addressing it.
Q: What is your background in the
subject area
KS: I have taught a Women & Law class and
a Women, Work & Families class for many
years. I have a longstanding interest in the
way law perceives women’s roles, and the way
cultural understandings of women’s roles are
reflected in the law.
I have written at length about the way
law captures and fails to capture the value
generated by women’s domestic labor. I also
have written about the ways urban planning,
26 Fall | 2009 Boston | University The Record School | 26 of Law | www.bu.edu/law