Climbing Above the Culture Clash

which is reflected in land use regulation,
reflects particular ideas about women in
homes as they interact with workplaces. I’ve
written about work-family policy generally.
I also just published a book with a colleague
from another law school called The Essentials
of Family Law.
LM: I went into law teaching with a strong
interest in doing work in gender and law
and feminist legal theory. When I started at
Hofstra University, I designed the feminist
legal theory class. Toward the end of my time
at Hofstra, I designed a gender colloquium
with a colleague [Joanna Grossman], who
is the co-editor of my new book, Gender
Equality. So I had done it one time before I
came to BU.
I have always had an interest in gender as a
category of analysis. When I went into law
teaching, one of my big goals was to be able
to do more with that interest, to write and
teach in that area.
Q: How does the Gender, Law &
Public Policy colloquium differ from
other gender-related courses at BU
Law
LM: Rather than have a whole course devoted
to a study, say, of feminist legal theory, you’re
really looking at gender as a very big category.
And you are looking at an array of speakers,
not all of whom may approach the topic from
a feminist theory perspective. For example,
this fall one of our speakers from Suffolk
[Frank Rudy Cooper] has done a lot of work
on black masculinity. And so he’s going to be
looking at the recent arrest of Professor Gates
through the lens of black masculinity theory.
It’s not a systematic course, where a student
would go in and come out knowing seven
different schools of feminist thought and
15 current debates among feminists. It’s
more like, if we try to focus on gender and
how questions of gender are at the heart of
a lot of law and policy debates, what can we
learn And it changes semester to semester.
This semester we’re going to have a session
on rights of women in Islam and Judaism to
public prayer. We didn’t really discuss women
and religion last time.
And I think that students also like the
opportunity to be able to engage with each
other in a relatively small class where they
are challenged to express their reaction to a
piece and to try to assess the strengths and
weaknesses of it. In other words, it’s not
passive learning. •
Editor’s note: BU Law Professors Kristin Collins,
Pnina Lahav, Linda McClain and Katharine
Silbaugh each specialize in aspects of gender
and the law, along with many other academic
interests. McClain will teach this course again
in the fall with a new lineup of scholars that
includes Collins and Lahav.
Professor McClain’s latest book, Gender
Equality: Dimensions of Women’s Equal
Citizenship (Cambridge University Press
2009), looks at the discrepancy between
nations’ formal commitments to gender
equality and the experiential reality of
women’s lives. McClain co-edited the
book with a former colleague at Hofstra
University, Professor Joanna Grossman.
The book brings together 21 experts from different disciplines
to look at gender equality through the lens of citizenship,
covering topics ranging from “Stem Cells, Disability and
Abortion: A Feminist Approach to Equal Citizenship” to
“Gender and Human Rights: Between Morals and Politics.”
The collection of articles covers constitutional citizenship,
political citizenship, social citizenship, sexual and reproductive
citizenship and global citizenship — all in exploration of the
gap between the ideal of gender equality and the current reality,
and what it would take for the ideal to be realized.
On October 23, 2009, McClain moderated a panel at the
daylong symposium at BU Law, “Courting Change: Legal
Perspectives on Contemporary LGBT Issues,” which examined
legal issues surrounding LGBT rights.
On October 27, 2009, BU Law hosted a panel on the book,
moderated by Professor Pnina Lahav, and a reception. Panelists
included BU College of Arts and Sciences Dean Gina Sapiro,
BU Women’s Studies Director Diane Balser and Harvard
Kennedy School of Government Professor Jane Mansbridge.
Fall 2009 | The Record | 27