Not-Quite-Live-Blogging Intersectionality (Part I: General overview, Thursday)
posted by Kaimipono D. Wenger
I’m at the UCLA Intersectionality conference, and so far it has been phenomenal. I’m going to post some brief notes about the sessions I’ve attended so far. I’m typing these up while in a session – the intersectionality teaching and reading workshop. Hopefully these will be moderately coherent.
The conference started with an introduction from Saul, and quick comments from co-sponsors (including me, because TJSL is a co-sponsor of the event. The opening event was very well attended – a hundred people or so (maybe?), even though it was at 10 a.m. on a Thursday.
My own panel, Intersectional Critiques of Legal Doctrine started at 11 a.m. We had a nice group of speakers. KJ Greene from TJSL was talking about race and theft of cultural production. Joseph Morrisey from Stetson was discussing how to use Lochnerian theory to enhance LGBT rights. Chip Murray from Temple discussed the 13th Amendment as a tool to fight intersectional subordination, and new ways to see the 13th Amendment as broader than simply slavery, but also including badges of slavery. Finally, I spoke about using intersectionality more in legal discussions of reparations. Overall, I thought that the panel went very well. I’ll post more detailed notes about the panel in a short while. We had 20ish attendees (including a Feminist Law Professors blogger), and a lively discussion followed the talks. I was a little sad that I missed another panel at the same time, that had Paul Butler and Cheryl Harris. I hope that someone attended and took notes, I’d love to hear how that one went.
I had a very nice (brief) discussion after the panel with attendees, including a few academics and also some law students. I wish there were more time – I could have spent a lot more time talking about the topics, and the comments I got were very interesting.
I grabbed a very quick lunch and dashed to the next panel. I was hoping to do some panel hopping, actually, between Applied Intersectionality: Community Accountability and Violence in Communities of Color, and Employment Discrimination: Intersectionality, Masculinity, Segregation, and Institutional Responsibility. Both sounded very good. I wanted to hear Andrea Smith and the community accountability talk. I also wanted to hear Rebecca Lee from TJSL, and the Employment panel with Gowri Ramachadran and others.
Best laid plans, right? It didn’t happen. The community accountability talk was un-leave-able. As I was getting ready to sneak out, two of the panelists began discussing a class they taught about community accountability, where a student confessed early in class that he had raped a fellow student. The discussion was gripping. (Andrea Smith’s talk about non profits was also very good.) I’ll post more detailed notes to follow.
(I do hope that someone has notes from the Employment panel, though. And for that matter, the incarcerated women panel. It really is an embarrassment of riches, here. Amazing lineup.)
So far, the conference has been very good. I’ve seen a number of great scholars, including Kim Crenshaw, Cheryl Harris, Russell Robinson, Saul Sarabia, and a number of other excellent scholars. It really is a great group here. I’m really looking forward to the evening panel as well, with Catherine MacKinnon, Mari Matsuda, Sumi Cho, and Luke Harris. I am dying, trying to decide between panels on Friday. I’ll have an RA here, and I think I’m going to send him to take notes at a panel. Maybe two. And I hope to see many other people who I’m a big fan of. (Concurring Opinions guest blogger Angela Onwauchi-Willing will be here, her Saturday talk is one of many panels I hope to get to.)
That’s all for this post. I’ll follow up with more detailed notes on both the Intersectional Critiques of Legal Doctrines, and the Community Accountability panels.
(Are there any Co-Op readers here? There are over 400 registrants — I hope at least a few blog readers among them.)
March 11, 2010 at 4:37 pm
Posted in: Conferences, Race
Print This Post
Responses (2)
Maryland Conservatarian - March 12, 2010 at 12:01 pm
“As I was getting ready to sneak out, two of the panelists began discussing a class they taught about community accountability, where a student confessed early in class that he had raped a fellow student.”
Huh? Doesn’t that kind of go to fitness of character to be an attorney? I mean, I realize it’s not like he wrote a so-called “torture” memo, but still…
Kaimipono D. Wenger - March 12, 2010 at 4:13 pm
That speaker wasn’t a law professor, and the class they described was clearly an undergrad class.
An audience member asked why they didn’t call the cops. They said that the victim vehemently opposed that, and so they ended up trying to mediate a community response of sorts.
Leave a Reply