Queer and Feminist Approaches to Cultural Legal Studies Reading Group
‘Cultural Legal Studies’ (CLS) is an Australian term covering interdisciplinary research involving a range of ‘law ands…’ from the broadly theoretical ‘law and humanities’ to the media-specific ‘law and literature’, ‘law and film’ etc. This reading group is interested in how feminist and queer scholars are thinking and writing in this interdisciplinary space. What concerns do they take up? What texts to they play with? How do they challenge or expand the existing CLS framework? How do these scholars find themselves in conversation with each other (or not) in this space? We will be reading older and newer texts from across several common law jurisdictions.
The convenors are Janelle Koh (they/them) and Jo Commins (she/her). If you’re interested in attending, please email Janelle for further details.
Sessions will be held fortnightly on Tuesdays from 1:00pm - 2:00pm in Room 831, Level 8, Melbourne Law School. Please see schedule below.
Semester 2, 2024
- Tuesday 30 July 2024
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Room 831
Making Introductions: Australian traditions
Margaret Thornton, ‘Law and Popular Culture: Engendering Legal Vertigo’ in Margaret Thornton (ed), Romancing the Tomes: Popular Culture, Law and Feminism (Cavendish, 2002)
Larissa Behrendt, ‘Once Upon A Time’ in Larissa Behrendt, Finding Eliza: Power and Colonial Storytelling (University of Queensland Press, 2016)
Di Otto, ‘Embracing Queer Curiosity’ in Di Otto (ed) Queering International Law (Routledge, 2018) - Tuesday 13 August 2024
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Room 831
Queerness, Fire and Film
Ratna Kapur, ‘Too Hot to Handle: the Cultural Politics of Fire’ (2000) 64 Feminist Review 53Emma Genovese and Tamsin Philippa Paige, ‘Life as Distinct from Patriarchal Influence: Exploring Queerness and Freedom in Portrait of a Lady On Fire’ (2024) 50(1) AFLJ 1
- Tuesday 27 August 2024
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Room 831
Feminist Approaches to Home
Biddy Martin and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, ‘Feminist Politics: What’s Home Got to Do with It?’ in Teresa de Lauretis (ed) Feminist Studies/Critical Studies (1986)Iris Marion Young, ‘House and Home: Feminist Variations on a Theme’ in Iris Marion Young (ed), On Female Body Experience: Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays (OUP, 2005)
- Tuesday 10 September 2024
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Room 831
Outlaw Culture and Outlaw Texts
Nicole Watson, ‘Eliza Woree: An Early Pioneer of Outlaw Culture’ in Nicole Watson, Aboriginal Women, Law and Critical Race Theory: Storytelling from the Margins (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)Kristin Kalsem, ‘Sitting in Judgment: A Cross-Examination of Women, Law and Empire’ in Kristin Kalsem, In Contempt: Nineteenth Century, Women, Law and Literature (The Ohio State University Press, 2012), 96
- Tuesday 24 September 2024
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Room 831
Reading with the Feminist Body
Marco Wan, ‘Feminist Literary Theory and the Law: Reading Cases with Naomi Schor’ (2018) 26(2) Feminist Legal Studies 163Susan Heinzelman, ‘“Termes Queinte of Lawe” and Quaint Fantasies of Literature: Chaucer’s Man of Law and the Wife of Bath’ in Susan Heinzelman, Riding the Black Ram: Law, Literature and Gender (Stanford University Press, 2010)
- Tuesday 8 October 2024
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Room 831
Storytelling From the Margins
Lauren Berlant, “She’s Having an Episode: Patricia Williams and the Writing of Damaged Life” (2014) 27(1) Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 19–46.Patricia J. Williams, “On Being the Object of Property (a Gift of Intelligent Rage)” in Patricia J. Williams, The Alchemy of Race and Rights, (Harvard University Press, 1991) 216–36.
- Tuesday 22 October 2024
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Room to be confirmed
Feminist Theatre and Feminist Representations
Honni van Rijswijk, ‘Towards a Feminist Aesthetic of Justice: Sarah Kane’s Blasted as Theorisation of the Representation of Sexual Violence in International Law’ (2012) 36(1) Australian Feminist Law Journal 107-124.Rosanne Kennedy and Tanya Serisier, ‘‘Somewhere. Some time. Somehow. Something has to change’: Prima Facie and the cruel optimism of feminist legal advocacy’ (2024) 20(2) Crime Media Culture 163-178.
* Please be mindful that this week’s readings involve the description of sexual violence - Tuesday 5 November
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Room 831
Queer/Feminist Narratives in Australian Common Law
Tegan Evans, ‘Murderesses, monsters and madwomen: gender performance and the assessment of queer culpability in the Australian legal imagining’ (2022) 31(2) Griffith Law Review 217.Janelle Koh, ‘A sex worker first and a mother second: Treatment of sex worker parents in Family Court Parenting Proceedings’ (2022) 35 Australian Family Law Journal 89.
- Tuesday 19 November 2024
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Room 831
Resisting the Legislating Fairytale
Maria Aristodemou, ‘Fantasies of Women as Lawmakers in Angela Carter’s Bloody Chambers’ in Maria Aristodemou, Law and Literature: Journeys from Her to Eternity (OUP, 2000)Sara Ahmed, ‘Wilfulness and Feminist Subjectivity’ in Sarah Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life (Duke University Press, 2017)