Women,Gender,Sexuality Studies 395G - S- Gender,Sexuality,Race,&Law

Drawing on U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence, gender and sexuality studies, sociological literature, policy papers, documentary, and international law, we will examine the ways in which gender, sexuality, and race are constructed, contested, and regulated within legal, legislative, and juridical frameworks, across systems, spaces, and temporalities. Throughout this course, we will consider what the law is, what it does, how it operates to uphold systems of power and oppression and how it can be deployed in the service of intervention. More relevant issues and problems within civil rights, constitutional, family, and criminal law, considering topics including: the legal construction of race, gender, and sexuality; feminist approaches to the law of gender, sexuality, and race; the role of privacy, morality, and "rights" in the regulation of sexuality and the family; reproductive rights; adoption, bioethics, family formation, immigration, reproductive technologies, and violence; and finally, the relationship between legal intervention, critical race & feminist theory, activism, and praxis.