Influential Academic Courses

 

Comparative Law: this course examined the major legal traditions of the world.  It began by considering the concepts, functions, and methods of comparative legal study. Throughout the course, we addressed questions such as: Why did certain societies develop certain legal cultures?  Are certain legal systems best suited to certain social arrangements?  How do different legal traditions attempt to achieve the sometimes competing social, legal and governmental goals of order and justice? In doing so I was able to incorporate the theories I learned in my Women’s and Gender Studies major and apply them when analyzing the law. This course was largely influential in my initial interest to pursue a legal degree.  

 

What this course helped me to do: learned  to present information efficiently and precisely as well as understand the central importance of legal protocol

 

Feminist Perspectives and Theories: explored how feminist perspectives situate power and privilege in relationship to interlocking categories of gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, and nation. Through foundational theoretical texts, it expanded my understandings of significant theoretical frameworks, such as materialist feminism, standpoint epistemologies, critiques of scientific objectivity, intersectionality, post-colonialism, psychoanalysis, queer theory, transnational critique and feminist legal theory.

 

What this course helped me to do: simplify complex and intersectional theory

 

Seminar: Contemporary Feminist Challenges and Visions: As the capstone for my Women’s and Gender Studies training, this course, therefore, explores how contemporary intersectional feminist theory and modes of analysis can deepen our understandings over pressing 21st-century controversies. This course ultimately tied together everything I had learned in both my majors and allowed for me to reflect on my academic experience at Dickinson.

 

What this course helped me to do: expand my understanding of legal frameworks through th perspective of feminist legal theory