Gender, Sexuality, and the Law

Catalog description

With a record number of anti-LGBTQ bills passed in 2024 and cases like Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization destabilizing rights long taken for granted, it has never been more urgent to interrogate the fraught ties between gender, sexuality, and the law. Beginning in the colonial era and moving forward to the contemporary moment, we will chart the fissures, slippages, and alliances between the law and its gendered, racialized sexual subjects. We will study legal scholarship and court cases, alongside works of queer and trans theory, to think expansively about the charged encounters between gender, sexuality, and law. The course has a U.S. focus, but will often adopt a global perspective. It may be of particular interest to pre-law students, but will have broad applicability for everyone interested in our evolving sociolegal landscape of gender and sexuality. No prior exposure to law, legal studies, or critical theory necessary.