The Berkshire Conference on the History of Women is underway in Minneapolis. The program is here. The history of the Berks is here. I can't be there, alas, but Claire Potter (Tenured Radical) and Historiann are blogging it. Legal history highlights at the meeting include:
SEX, RACE, AND LEGAL CULTURES: COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL PERSPECTIVES
Chair: Kathleen Sheldon, University of California, Los Angeles
“Miss Eurafricain”: Race, Culture, and Identity in Francophone Africa, 1945-1960
Rachel Jean-Baptiste, University of Chicago
Plaçage, Travel Narratives, and the Law of Cohabitation in Antebellum New Orleans
Diana Williams, Wellesley College
Who is White? Legislating Race and Marriage in German Südwest Afrika
Kate Schroeder, Indiana University, Bloomington
Comment: Durba Ghosh, Cornell University
LAW AND THE REFASHIONING OF GENDER IN COLONIAL AND POST-COLONIAL INDIA
Chair and comment: Barbara N. Ramusack, University of Cincinnati
“To Restore the Comforts and Bliss of Married Life”: Restitution of Conjugal Rights in Indian Law since the Rukhmabai Decision of 1888
Sylvia Vatuk, University of Illinois, Chicago
Doing Gender, Making Caste: Religious Family Laws and Identity-Formation in India
Gopika Solanki, McGill University
“To Save Her Honor:” Cultural Defense in the 19th-Century Wife Murder in Bengal
Geraldine Forbes, State University of New York, Oswego
CONSTRUCTING U.S. FEMINIST LAW IN THE SECOND WAVE: UNIONS, LIBERALISM, AND PHILANTHROPY
Chair: Susan Hartmann, Ohio State University
Managing the Costs of Life: Feminism, Biopower and the Debate over Pregnancy Disability, 1974-1978
Deborah Dinner, Yale University
Grounded at Thirty-Two: How Stewardesses Used Title VII to Fight Age and Marriage Restrictions in the 1960s and 1970s
Allison Elias, University of Virginia
From Insurgency to Institutionalization: The Role of the Ford Foundation in the Modern Women’s Movement
Grace Leslie, Yale University
Comment: Sonya Michel, University of Maryland, College Park
“LET HER SPEAK”: WOMEN, VIOLENCE, AND THE COURTS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE, 1600-1950
Chair: George Robb, William Patterson University of New Jersey
Engendered Violence in Colonial New South Wales, Australia, 1788-1850
Alicia Megan Gray, University of New South Wales
Defining Persistent Cruelty in the Magistrates’ Courts: Wives and Their Resistance to Domestic Violence in England, 1903-1922
Gail Savage, St. Mary’s College of Maryland
Intimate Violence and the Law in 17th-Century Maryland Amanda Lea Miracle, Bowling Green State University
Women in Court: The Trial of James Rush, 1849
Ginger Frost, Samford University
Comment: Danaya C. Wright, University of Florida
CITIZENSHIP DEFINED, DEFENDED, EXTENDED: THE POLITICS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMANHOOD
ROUNDTABLE
Chair: Lori Ginzberg, Pennsylvania State University
“Colored Citizens”: African American Women and Northern Reconstruction
Leslie A. Schwalm, University of Iowa
A Tradition of Dissent: African American Women and Citizenship in Louisiana
Shannon Frystak, East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania
Gender and Jurisdiction: Slavery and Law in the Lives of Saint-Domingue’s Enslaved Refugees
Martha S. Jones, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Negotiating Women: Black Women and the Politics of Freedom in the Antebellum South
Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, Indiana University, Bloomington
Making Citizens Out of Slaves: The Role of Patronage and Property in Models of Creolisation and Citizenship
Jane-Marie Collins, University of Nottingham
African-American Women and the Creation of Citizenship Law in the Old Northwest, 1779-1830
Bridgett Williams-Searle, College of St. Rose
MOVEMENT, COUNTERMOVEMENT, AND THE LAW: STORIES OF THE U.S. SECOND WAVE
Chair and comment: Jane S. De Hart, University of California, Santa Barbara
Women Who Want to be Women: The ERA Battle in Texas and the Development of a State, National, and Transnational Conservative Women’s Network
Nancy Baker, Sam Houston State University
Women-Protective Antiabortion Arguments and the Rise of the New Right
Reva Siegel, Yale Law School
The Accidental Feminist: Firefighting, Breastfeeding, and the Rights of Economic Citizenship
Sharon Lake, University of Iowa
The Other Litigation: Gender, Law, and Feminism in Revisiting EEOC v. Sears
Emily Zuckerman, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
NEW DIRECTIONS IN AMERICAN MARRIAGE HISTORY: BRINGING IN RELIGION
Chair and comment: Jason S. Lantzer, Indiana University, Bloomington
“The Loneliness of Lovers”: Marriage Encounter, Catholicism, and Pro-Marriage Politics in the 1970s
Rebecca L. Davis, University of Delaware
From before Lord Hardwicke's Act to after the Defense of Marriage Act: Why Evangelical Protestants Are Right When They Say That State Recognition of Same-Sex Marriages Threatens Their Marriages
Mary Anne Case, University of Chicago and Princeton University
Asunder: Liberal Clergy, Same Sex Marriage, and the Law
Sarah Barringer Gordon, University of Pennsylvania
CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN THE TRANSNATIONAL HISTORY OF ABORTION
ROUNDTABLE
Chair: Leslie J. Reagan, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
From Edelin to Carhart: Abortion Provision in the U.S., 1970s-Present
Johanna Schoen, University of Iowa
Abortion in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean
Nilda L. Moreno-Ruiz, Boston University School of Medicine
Restrictive Anti-Abortion Laws in Poland
Wanda Nowicka, Federation for Women and Family, Poland
Abortion in "White Australia"
Barbara Baird, Flinders University, South Australia
New Repressions (and New Directions)
Leslie J. Reagan, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
SEEKING LADY JUSTICE: WOMEN, GENDER, AND THE COURTS
Chair: Vivian Bruce Conger, Ithaca College
Justice Isn’t Blind: Gendered Strategies of Defense in Cases of Reproductive Crimes in France
Karen Huber, Wesleyan College
Gendered Speech and Punishment in 17th-Century Virginia
Christine Eisel, Bowling Green State University
Women’s Access to Law Courts in Western Europe: The (Late) Case of Belgium
Eva Stefanie Roberta Schandevyl, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Courting Disaster? Women, Qadi Courts, and Identity in the Postemancipation Zanzibar Islands of East Africa
Elisabeth McMahon, Tulane University
Comment: Abby M. Schrader, Franklin and Marshall College
GENDERED RIGHTS AND HUMAN RIGHTS
SEMINAR
Leaders: Louise Edwards, University of Technology
Stanlie M. James, Arizona State University
Barbara Molony, Santa Clara University
Gendering Rights in Nasser’s Egypt: State Feminism and the Politics of Inclusion
Laura Bier, Georgia Institute of Technology
Women, Fascism, and Work in Francoist Spain: The Law for Political, Professional, and Labor Rights
Jessica Davidson, James Madison University
American Women Veterans and the Gendering of Rights, 1976-1997
Jean Dunlavy, Boston University
The Birth of the Pregnant Professional: Maternity and the Right to a Job
Ruth Fairbanks, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Relieving Women: Female Paupers and the Scottish Poor Law
Wendy Gordon, State University of New York, Plattsburgh
Fourth Generation Rights and Feminism before the First Wave: Rethinking the History of Feminism in Order to Forge its Future
Tamara Harvey, George Mason University
Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women’s
Pre-World War II Activism
Melissa Klapper, Rowan University
Negotiating Identities: The Case of the Igbo Wife
Chidinma Mbamalu, Redeemer’s University
Duties without Rights? Concepts of Women’s Citizenship in the Nazi
Volksgemeinschaft, ca. 1930-1936
Jennifer Walcoff, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
WOMEN AND THE LAW COURTS IN GLOBAL HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
SEMINAR
Leaders: Mary Ann Fay, Morgan State University
Margaret Hunt, Amherst College
Favourites of the Law? Crime, Coverture, and Coercion in 18th-Century London
Marisha Caswell, Queen’s University
Tudor Treason and Gender: Change or Continuity?
Sarah Donelson, Miami University
Seeking Restitution: Labouring-Status Wives and Their Dowries in Early 15th-Century Valencia
Dana Lightfoot, University of Texas, El Paso
Women and Their Legal Personae in Late Medieval Marseille
Susan McDonough, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
“To Hell With Women Magistrates:” An Examination of Women Magistrates and the Woman’s Court in Alberta, Canada, 1917-1932
Kelly Mitchell, University of Western Ontario
Women of Color as Litigants during the Age of Slavery, Revolution, and Abolition
Sue Peabody, Washington State University, Vancouver
“A poor puddinges Apology:” Discourse on Impotence and
Consummation in Early Modern England
Johanna Rickman, Gainesville State College
The Application of Islamic Family Law in Palestine: Text and Context
Nahda Shehada, Institute of Social Studies
Reconstructing Wifehood: Family and Political Authority in the
Colonial Indian Courts
Mytheli Sreenivas, Ohio State University
Muslim Women as Heirs: Inheritance, Gender, and Islamic Courts in
Early Modern and Modern Times
Judith Tucker, Georgetown University
