Feminist Legal Theory: An Anti-Essentialist Reader

by Nancy E. Dowd, Robert R.M. Verchick, Martha Minow

Overview

Feminist Legal Theory is a groundbreaking collection of feminist work proceeding from the core assumption that the differences among women are essential to feminist analysis. Rather than presenting feminist legal theory sequentially, with “African American feminism” or “critical race feminism” added on at the end, the volume thoroughly integrates key readings from non-white, non-middle class, and non-mainstream writers throughout.
The volume explores the intersections of race, class, and gender in such areas as theory, family, work and economic issues, and violence against women. Each section of the book begins with an introduction providing context and insights into how the particular pieces included challenge norms and create new paradigms. This vibrant, challenging collection of work by a broad range of authors represents the cutting edge of feminist theory in concrete applications essential to gender equality.
Contributors include: Patricia Hill Collins, Bonnie Thornton Dill, Angela P. Harris, Sylvia A. Law, Mari Matsuda, Martha Minow, Esther Ngan-Ling Chow, john a. powell, Jenny Rivera, and Maxine Baca Zinn.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814719121
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	01/01/2003
Pages:	417
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Nancy Dowd is Professor and David Levin Chair in Family Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. She is the editor of the Families, Law and Society series at NYU Press, and author or editor of numerous books, including A New Juvenile
Justice System (NYU 2015).

Robert R.M. Verchick is the Gauthier-St. Martin Chair in Law at Loyola University New Orleans and Senior Fellow at Tulane University’s School of Social Work. He is the author of Facing Catastrophe: Environmental Action for a Post-Katrina World.

Martha Minow is the Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor at Harvard Law School.

Table of Contents

part i Theories, Strategies, and Methodologies

part ii Women’s Work and Wealth

part iii Women, Children, Well-Being, and the State

part iv Women and Violence: Individuals, the State, and Other Actors

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“. . . Recommend quite strongly this well-edited and thought-provoking text. It provides a valuable contribution to legal scholarship.”
-Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice

,

“If one wants to engage with the differences of women’s lives in experiences, Dowd and Jacob’s Anti-Essentialist Reader will be an enlightening beginning. With its emphasis on collaboration, it includes necessary but uncomfortable conversations, recognizing the challenges of cultural ethnocentrism and relativism which American feminists face. There are few expectations upon which it does not deliver.”

-Feminist Legal Studies

Editorial Reviews

. . . Recommend quite strongly this well-edited and thought-provoking text. It provides a valuable contribution to legal scholarship.”
• Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice

“If one wants to engage with the differences of women’s lives in experiences, Dowd and Jacob’s Anti-Essentialist Reader will be an enlightening beginning. With its emphasis on collaboration, it includes necessary but uncomfortable conversations, recognizing the challenges of cultural ethnocentrism and relativism which American feminists face. There are few expectations upon which it does not deliver.”

- Feminist Legal Studies

From the Publisher