Program Overview

Law 692: Feminist Legal Studies Workshop I

Course Description

The Feminist Legal Studies Workshop is designed to enable students to work closely with faculty in analyzing and discussing with leading feminist theorists and scholars visiting Queen's Faculty the topics of the speakers' papers.

Course Information

The Feminist Legal Studies Workshop course is offered for one course credit per term. In the fall term of 2015, it is designated as Law 692; in the winter term of 2016 it is designated as Law 693. Students may enroll for one credit in the fall term, or for one credit in the winter term, or for a total of two credits in both terms combined. This course can also be combined with an ISP for students who may wish to carry out in-depth independent supervised work in relation to one or more of the areas discussed in this workshop.

Scheduling Details

The workshop speakers will typically be scheduled for the regular visitor slots on Mondays and Fridays, which run from 1 to 2:30 pm, and one or two additional meetings per term will be scheduled around everyone's class and other commitments.

Evaluation of Student Participation

• Students will attend all the speakers events (4/term or all 7/all year)
• Students will prepare advance reading and two advance questions for each speaker in each term, plus 1-2 pages of briefing notes after each session (60% of course credit)
• Students will participate in the discussion at the speakers visit (10% of course credit)
• Students will prepare a short term paper of approximately 10-12 pages on a topic that relates to any one of the speakers events (30% of course credit)

Fall Term 2017 Lectures

Monday, September 25, 2017

• Speaker: Rachel Kohut, Faculty of Law, McGill University
• Topic: The Importance of Stories in Legal Education and Practice: From Midwifery in the Arctic to LNFB ['Law Needs Feminist Because...']
• Abstract: Stories have informed Rachel's research and career trajectory. Beginning with her graduate studies in public health before starting law school, Rachel will speak to how she started researching midwifery in northern communities and how narratives surrounding birth from women, midwifes and obstetricians and gynecologists informed the analysis used in her work.
• Bio: A fourth year law student at McGill University, Rachel is insatiably curious about the intersection of law, health and gender, and spends her time thinking about how to make policies in these realms can be more innovative and effective.
• Background Reading:
  • Women Lawyers Blog for Workplace Equality: Blogging as a Feminist Legal Method
  • Models and Mentors (Chapter 3) in Becoming Gentlemen: Women, Law School, and Institutional Change

Monday, November 13, 2017

• Speaker: Gillian Balfour, Chair and Associate Professor, Dept. of Sociology, Trent University
• Topic: Gender based violence and moral culpability: Exploring colonial trauma in sentencing narratives of Indigenous Women
• Bio: Gillian Balfour is an Associate Professor and Chair, Sociology, at Trent University. Her research is in the areas of feminist engagement with all aspects of the criminal justice system, with a particular focus on the victimization, criminalization and incarceration continuum.
• Background Readings:
  • Balfour, Gillian. "Do law reforms matter? Exploring the victimization−criminalization continuum in the sentencing of Aboriginal women in Canada." International review of victimology 19, no. 1 (2013): 85-102.
  • Balfour, Gillian, and Janice Du Mont. "Confronting restorative justice in neo-liberal times: Legal and rape narratives in conditional sentencing." Sexual assault in Canada: Law, legal practice and women's activism (2012): 701-724.
  • Stubbs, Julie, and Julia Tolmie. "Battered women charged with homicide: Advancing the interests of Indigenous women." Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 41, no. 1 (2008): 138-161.

Monday, November 20, 2017

• Speaker: Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, Supreme Court of Canada
• Topic: Q &A with the Chief Justice
• Background Reading: McLachlin, Beverley. "The Charter 25 Years Later: The Good, the Bad, and the Challenges." Osgoode Hall Law Journal, 45.2 (2007): 365-377.

Monday, November 27, 2017

• Speaker: Nancy Coldham, Chief Advocate and Founder, Society for the Advancement of Women's Voices in Public Policy (EVE Society) and CriticalMass Women Inc.
• Topic: The Politics of Voice: Women at the Ballot Box
• Abstract: Ontario is celebrating the Suffrage Centenary this year. Women started getting the vote in Ontario on April 12,1917. Women candidates are still a minority and a 50-50 split in Cabinet Ministers happened for the first time in 2015.
• Bio: Nancy Coldham, MAIIC, Hons. B.J. is a past candidate herself. She is past president of the Judy LaMarsh Fund that raised money for women candidates. Founder of the EVE Society and CriticalMass Women Inc.
• Background Reading:
  • Stuart Soroka, Fred Cutler, Dietlind Stolle and Patrick Fournier. "Capturing Change (and Stability) in the 2011 Campaign." Policy Options (2011): 70-77.
  • Coulter, Kendra. "Women, Poverty Policy, and the Production of Neoliberal Politics in Ontario, Canada." Journal of Women, Politics & Policy. (2009): 23-45.
  • Elizabeth Gidengil, Andre Blais, Joanna Everitt, Patrick Fournier, Neil Nevitte. "Back to the Future? Making Sense of the 2005 Canadian Election outside Quebec." Canadian Journal of Political Science/ Revue canadienne de science politique. (2006): 1-25.