Feminist Legal Theory and Stone’s Panes of the Glass Ceiling

This comprehensive analysis, divided into three parts, navigates the intricate tapestry of discrimination against women in the American workplace. Part I elucidates the historical and theoretical foundations, spanning feminist theory evolution, the modern women\u27s movement, and the trajectory of women\u27s labor force participation. In Part II, the discussion delves into the critical insights of Professor Kerri Stone\u27s groundbreaking work, Panes of the Glass Ceiling, connecting each identified glass pane to feminist theory. Part III introduces a novel perspective by appending a 10th pane to the glass ceiling: Patriarchal Violence. This addition underscores the pervasive impact of gender-based violence on women\u27s professional trajectories, offering a holistic framework to address and eradicate systemic barriers to equality

Foreword: A Century Since Suffrage: How Did We Get Here? Where Will We Go? How Will We Get There?

One hundred years have passed since (white) women attained the right to vote. In the century since the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, American women have transitioned from an existence as mere objects of history to becoming active subjects of history. In 2019 and 2020, many programs and conferences were organized to celebrate the achievements of America\u27s women and commemorate the 100th anniversary of women\u27s suffrage. The Section on Women in Legal Education hosted a program at the January 2020 American Association of Law Schools (AALS) Annual Meeting titled, “A Century Since Suffrage: How Did We Get Here? Where Will We Go? How Will We Get There?” Professors from law schools across the country submitted their proposals. A committee comprised of women in legal education reviewed the professors\u27 proposals and selected those who would be invited to present their papers. A number of distinguished women law professors were selected. Their presentations each examined specific aspects of the so-far-100-year-old movement for women\u27s equality. They provided diverse perspectives on the movement for women\u27s equality including: arguments against state rescission of the Equal Rights Amendment, an analysis of the degree to which white women\u27s becoming was in furtherance of the oppression of Black women, exploration of how infringements on women\u27s rights are justified under the guise of protection of religious liberty, and an analysis of the history of women\u27s fight for political, economic, and reproductive equality. Their papers are published in this Symposium Issue of the Duquesne Law Review

Privacy: Pre- and Post-Dobbs

The United States Supreme Court has interpreted the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to include a fundamental right to familial privacy. The exact contours of that right were developed by the Court from 1923 until 2015. In 2022, with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the Supreme Court abruptly changed course and held that the right to terminate a pregnancy is no longer part of the right to privacy previously recognized by the Court. This essay seeks to place Dobbs in the context of the Court’s family privacy cases in an effort to understand the Court’s reasoning and the impact the decision may have in the future

Patriarchal Violence

For over a century, feminist theorists and activists have sought equality for women. They have aimed their efforts at the many distinct and related causes of women’s inequality, among them gendered violence, sexual violence, domestic violence, and violence against women. Recognizing the need to understand problems in order to solve them, feminist theorists have devoted decades to conceptualizing various manifestations of such violence, ranging from private acts, such as sexual assault and intimate partner abuse, to public acts, such as the incarceration of mothers and the criminalization of pregnancy. In this article, I argue in favor of conceptualizing the many discrete types of violence that subjugate girls, women, and all gender-oppressed people as part of one comprehensive system of “patriarchal violence.” Further, I introduce an organizational framework that will allow scholars, teachers, and activists to more effectively and efficiently theorize, teach, and eradicate patriarchal violence. Through this framework, various manifestations of patriarchal violence can be better identified, organized, and understood at micro and macro levels. My patriarchal violence framework is modeled upon the violence framework established by the World Health Organization and it is grounded in, and inspired by, the work of feminist theorists who have been naming and theorizing various forms of patriarchal violence for over a century. It allows for the organization of all patriarchal violence according to two important considerations: (1) the nature of the relationship between the perpetrator and victim; and (2) the identity of the perpetrator. At a micro level, the framework provides a means of understanding how individual victims experience cycles of patriarchal violence by identifying a particular act of patriarchal violence and then tracing each and every related preceding and subsequent manifestation. At a macro level, it serves as a tool to illuminate the many connections between seemingly isolated acts of violence so as to easily reveal the larger ideologically-driven phenomenon that perpetuates the systemic oppression of women. Application of this framework to the patriarchal violence experienced by girls, women, and other gender-oppressed people will assist scholars, teachers, and activists in: (1) characterizing, naming, organizing, and understanding discrete manifestations of patriarchal violence; (2) recognizing and demonstrating how seemingly discrete manifestations of patriarchal violence merge in a single victim’s experience to create a cycle of patriarchal violence; (3) realizing the depth and interconnectedness of the harms experienced by patriarchal violence victims; (4) acknowledging the powerful role played by intersecting social, legal, and governmental forces in perpetuating patriarchal violence; and (5) understanding the ubiquitous nature of patriarchal violence. This article is the first in a series of articles. It provides the historical and theoretical foundation for forthcoming articles that will apply the patriarchal violence framework to the many discrete and interconnected manifestations of patriarchal violence perpetrated and experienced by victims

Placing the Academy: Essays on Landscape, Work, and Identity

Twenty-one writers answer the call for literature that addresses who we are by understanding where we are--where, for each of them, being in some way part of academia. In personal essays, they imaginatively delineate and engage the diverse, occasionally unexpected play of place in shaping them, writers and teachers in varied environments, with unique experiences and distinctive world views, and reconfiguring for them conjunctions of identity and setting, here, there, everywhere, and in between.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/1019/thumbnail.jp

Early Increase in Extrasynaptic NMDA Receptor Signaling and Expression Contributes to Phenotype Onset in Huntington's Disease Mice

SummaryN-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) excitotoxicity is implicated in the pathogenesis of Huntington's disease (HD), a late-onset neurodegenerative disorder. However, NMDARs are poor therapeutic targets, due to their essential physiological role. Recent studies demonstrate that synaptic NMDAR transmission drives neuroprotective gene transcription, whereas extrasynaptic NMDAR activation promotes cell death. We report specifically increased extrasynaptic NMDAR expression, current, and associated reductions in nuclear CREB activation in HD mouse striatum. The changes are observed in the absence of dendritic morphological alterations, before and after phenotype onset, correlate with mutation severity, and require caspase-6 cleavage of mutant huntingtin. Moreover, pharmacological block of extrasynaptic NMDARs with memantine reversed signaling and motor learning deficits. Our data demonstrate elevated extrasynaptic NMDAR activity in an animal model of neurodegenerative disease. We provide a candidate mechanism linking several pathways previously implicated in HD pathogenesis and demonstrate successful early therapeutic intervention in mice

Patriarchal Violence

For over a century, feminist theorists and activists have sought equality for women. They have aimed their efforts at the many distinct and related causes of women’s inequality, among them gendered violence, sexual violence, domestic violence, and violence against women. Recognizing the need to understand problems in order to solve them, feminist theorists have devoted decades to conceptualizing various manifestations of such violence, ranging from private acts, such as sexual assault and intimate partner abuse, to public acts, such as the incarceration of mothers and the criminalization of pregnancy. In this article, I argue in favor of conceptualizing the many discrete types of violence that subjugate girls, women, and all gender-oppressed people as part of one comprehensive system of “patriarchal violence.” Further, I introduce an organizational framework that will allow scholars, teachers, and activists to more effectively and efficiently theorize, teach, and eradicate patriarchal violence. Through this framework, various manifestations of patriarchal violence can be better identified, organized, and understood at micro and macro levels. My patriarchal violence framework is modeled upon the violence framework established by the World Health Organization and it is grounded in, and inspired by, the work of feminist theorists who have been naming and theorizing various forms of patriarchal violence for over a century. It allows for the organization of all patriarchal violence according to two important considerations: (1) the nature of the relationship between the perpetrator and victim; and (2) the identity of the perpetrator. At a micro level, the framework provides a means of understanding how individual victims experience cycles of patriarchal violence by identifying a particular act of patriarchal violence and then tracing each and every related preceding and subsequent manifestation. At a macro level, it serves as a tool to illuminate the many connections between seemingly isolated acts of violence so as to easily reveal the larger ideologically-driven phenomenon that perpetuates the systemic oppression of women. Application of this framework to the patriarchal violence experienced by girls, women, and other gender-oppressed people will assist scholars, teachers, and activists in: (1) characterizing, naming, organizing, and understanding discrete manifestations of patriarchal violence; (2) recognizing and demonstrating how seemingly discrete manifestations of patriarchal violence merge in a single victim’s experience to create a cycle of patriarchal violence; (3) realizing the depth and interconnectedness of the harms experienced by patriarchal violence victims; (4) acknowledging the powerful role played by intersecting social, legal, and governmental forces in perpetuating patriarchal violence; and (5) understanding the ubiquitous nature of patriarchal violence. This article is the first in a series of articles. It provides the historical and theoretical foundation for forthcoming articles that will apply the patriarchal violence framework to the many discrete and interconnected manifestations of patriarchal violence perpetrated and experienced by victims

Reading materials: Composing literacy practices in and out of school.

By considering the contested nature of culture, the instability and sociality of reading, the importance of materiality, and the interconnectedness of reading and writing, my dissertation makes visible the ways readers compose literacy practices in order to place themselves in a social world. Each chapter examines the artifactual traces and concrete practices of readers who are often left out of the sweeping narratives that try to account for the state of literacy today: anonymous readers in a Midwestern public library, Oprah's Book Club readers, student readers in a composition class, and composition teachers as readers of their students' writing. I ultimately argue for the value of grammars of difficulty---place, emotion, use---for readers, teachers, and scholars to better understand and participate in contemporary reading practices. My argument is based on an understanding of reading as an interpretatively open, materially grounded, and socially embedded act. It is informed by composition theory, cultural studies, and print culture studies, insisting on a focus on the local and the particular---not the ideal but the real, not the generally located but the specifically situated---and on an investigation of difference, of what falls outside conventional genres, disciplines, and frameworks. My project understands readers as having agency, as making choices; it responds to critics who fail to recognize reading in unsanctioned places; and it considers ways in which readers use literacy as a tool in ordering (and perhaps disordering) their everyday lives. I make my argument largely by analyzing different groups' responses to Toni Morrison's Paradise . As I look at the specific practices of a particular site, I argue that such practices allow their members to be readers of some texts but not others, to read in a particular way but not another, and to lay claim to some ways of knowing but not others. In addition, I consider the tensions---and, at times, the overlap---of academic and public ways of reading, showing not only how curricular and extracurricular readings are often defined and performed in opposition to assumptions about the other but also how strict differences between schooled and unschooled readings unravel.Ph.D.American literatureAmerican studiesLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsRhetoricSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/132255/2/3057984.pd

Missing the Mark: How FMLA\u27s Bonding Leave Fails Mothers

In the two decades since it was adopted, the Family and Medical Leave Act (hereinafter “FMLA” or “the Act”) has been consistently criticized for its failure to achieve its stated goal of enabling workers “to balance the demands of the workplace with the needs of families.” Since it was signed into law in 1993, legal scholars and women’s rights groups, while applauding the accomplishments of the Act, have expressed their dissatisfaction with the status of family and medical leave law in the United States. It has been argued that the FMLA should be expanded to cover more workers, for more reasons, for longer periods of time, and to provide for income replacement and a right to return to work on a part-time basis.I echo the calls for more comprehensive job-protected leave. However, in this article, I focus exclusively on how FMLA’s bonding leave fails mothers. Specifically, FMLA bonding leave poses several primary and subsidiary problems for mothers, mother-infant bonding, and attachment. First, the FMLA poses accessibility problems through its stringent coverage limitations, eligibility requirements, and lack of income replacement. Due to these accessibility issues, the FMLA excludes most mothers from accessing its job-protected bonding leave, frustrating the primary congressional intention behind the bonding leave provision. Second, the FMLA poses subsidiary applicability problems due to the length, inflexibility, and vulnerability of the leave. The inflexible twelve-week bonding leave entitlement is therefore substantively lacking. It falls short of providing an environment that would facilitate healthy parent-infant bonding as intended by the Act. As a result of these primary and subsidiary dilemmas, FMLA’s bonding leave fails to address the bonding and attachment needs of mothers and infants