The Stanford Center for Law and History will invite paper submissions from graduate students for its fifth annual conference, “Legal Histories of the Body and the State: Dobbs and the Legacies of Regulating Gender and Sex.” This conference seeks to bring together scholars who examine the intersectional legal histories of regulating and policing sex, gender, and reproduction. As attacks on gender and sexual equality are on the rise, advocates point towards history as justification for state-enforced heteronormativity and traditional gender roles. This conference addresses the court’s claim to diagnose Roe’s “faulty historical analysis” and invites attendees to examine the interwoven legal histories of gender, race, class, and sexuality that have shaped today’s sociolegal and political landscape. As women, migrants, LGBTQIA, and many more are left trying to navigate a post-Dobbs present, this conference aims to give us a better understanding of how past communities have challenged the law to guarantee greater equality for all. This one-day conference will be held on Friday, May 5th, 2023, at Stanford and is cosponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center. This conference will include three panels and a book talk focused on Felicia Kornbluh’s forthcoming book, A Woman’s Life is a Human Life: My Mother, Our Neighbor, and the Journey from Reproductive Rights to Reproductive Justice. It will conclude with a keynote session featuring Professor Mary Zeigler of UC Davis Law who will present, “Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization and the Remaking of Constitutional Politics.”
Areas of possible, but certainly not exhaustive, legal-historical interest for the conference include:
Reproductive Rights and Race
Race, Gender, and Access to Medical Care/Medical Decisions
Reproductive Rights and Disability
Rhetoric around Reproductive Rights
Race, Law, and Gender
Barriers to Reproductive Autonomy
Race and Eugenics
Law and Contraception
More.
