In Search of Law in Women’s and Gender Studies: Toward Critical Womanist Legal Studies ciplinaires et critiques du « womanism » pour aborder Mark Kessler is Professor of Multicultural Women’s certaines des préoccupations les plus importantes. Il and Gender Studies at Texas Woman’s University. His discute des contours d’une approche de recherche, s’ap- research examines the role of law in struggles for social puyant sur des travaux antérieurs en EGF et de leurs justice and has been published in numerous journals, recoupements avec des connaissances juridiques cri- including Law & Society Review, Judicature, and Law tiques d’autres domaines du milieu universitaire ayant & Policy. His current research explores womanist and des buts, des objectifs et des engagements semblables new materialist interventions in feminist critical legal envers la justice sociale. Il évalue également dans quelle theories. mesure les études juridiques sont représentées dans les travaux actuels publiés dans les revues EGF et souligne Abstract comment une insistance accrue sur ce savoir permet In the context of recent critiques of Women’s and Gen- aux chercheurs d’explorer utilement des préoccupations der Studies’ (WGS) institutionalization within the acad- importantes dans ce domaine, y compris le fonctionne- emy, this article foregrounds the role that a transdisci- ment du pouvoir et des privilèges, les interventions pos- plinary and critical womanist legal studies may play in sibles dans les discours culturels dominants et les con- addressing some of the most significant concerns. It dis- structions juridiques des rôles entrecroisés liés à la race, cusses the contours of a research approach, building on au sexe, à la classe et à la sexualité. En outre, cet article previous work in WGS as it intersects with critical legal suggère que des études juridiques transdisciplinaires et scholarship from other locations in the academy with critiques du « womanism » peuvent aider à aborder les similar goals, purposes, and commitments to social jus- préoccupations que l’institutionnalisation réussie des tice. It also assesses the extent to which legal studies are EGF a rétréci la portée du domaine, émoussé son éner- evidenced in current published works in WGS journals gie critique et isolé les travaux universitaires des com- and emphasizes how an increased emphasis on such munautés de base et de l’action politique. scholarship permits researchers to usefully explore sig- nificant concerns in the field, including the operation of power and privilege, possible interventions in dominant cultural discourses, and legal constructions of intersect- ing roles of race, gender, class, and sexuality. Further, the article suggests that transdisciplinary critical wom- anist legal studies may help to address concerns that the successful institutionalization of WGS has narrowed the field’s focus, blunted its critical edge, and separated academic work from grassroots communities and polit- ical action. Résumé Dans le contexte des récentes critiques de l’institution- nalisation des Études sur le genre et les femmes (EGF) au sein du milieu universitaire, cet article met en avant le rôle que peuvent jouer les études juridiques transdis- Atlantis 37.2 (2), 2016 96 www.msvu.ca/atlantis Introduction are notable achievements, reflecting important and In a recent assessment of doctoral dissertations painstaking work by committed faculty and administra- produced in Women’s Studies, Sally Kitch and Mary tors. However, these achievements have also produced Margaret Fonow (2012) raise important questions about challenges to a field that often portrays itself as criti- the role of doctoral research in knowledge production, cal, politically engaged with communities outside the given its role in shaping Women’s Studies as a field. Ac- academy, and fundamentally interdisciplinary or, more knowledging that “the field is still in transition from recently, “transdisciplinary” (Dölling and Hark 2000; its multidisciplinary origins in programs composed of Leavy 2011; Lichtenstein 2012). discipline-trained scholars to one composed of schol- Diane Lichtenstein (2012) identifies one of ars who hold women’s studies PhDs or certificates,” they the most significant challenges associated with devel- suggest that “it may be time for women’s studies faculty opments in WGS. Many of the field’s pioneers viewed and administrators to begin defining what constitutes themselves as engaged in transgressive work, contesting research that is specific to the field.” Included in this prevailing academic structures and the departmental effort to gain greater clarity is the need to explore, in divisions of the university. “WGS has sought,” Lichten- greater depth, “how to translate the more familiar in- stein writes, “to challenge not only disciplinary borders terdisciplinary teaching mission in women’s (gender/ and disciplinary rules of conduct but the very idea of sexuality/feminist) studies into research agendas and boundaries as well as the institutional structures that methodologies” (100). maintain those boundaries.” However, she goes on to Kitch and Fonow’s study is one of a number of argue that “[r]eliance on the narrative that ‘the field is important writings about the field of WGS published in interdisciplinary’ conceals a deep tension—that an in- the past fifteen years (e.g., Messer-Davidow 2002; Wieg- tellectual project can be pursued in institutions whose man 2002a; Kennedy and Beins 2005a; Scott 2008; Orr, structures function as obstacles to that project” (35). Braithwaite, and Lichtenstein 2012). In general, these Lichtenstein draws attention to the lack of meaningful writings assess, from multiple perspectives, the impli- discussion in WGS about the field in relation to disci- cations of WGS steadily securing departmental status in plines, interdisciplinarity, and how, or if, research top- the university and adding graduate degrees in the field. ics in the field may be pursued in transgressive ways Women’s Studies, or Women’s and Gender Studies as through established academic structures. the field has, more recently, come to be known, has been Lichtenstein’s discussion highlights some diffi- characterized in these works in various and sometimes culties associated with Kitch and Fonow’s (2012) sug- contradictory ways - as, among other things, being “on gestion that WGS research in general and doctoral the edge” (Scott 2008), “on its own” (Wiegman 2002a), dissertation research in particular should be clearly de- an “impossibility” (Brown 2008), a developing interdis- fined. Quoting Ann Braithwaite (2012), who explores ciplinary field with a promising future (Wiegman 2005; the concept of “discipline” as used in WGS, Lichten- Kennedy and Beins 2005b), a “failure” due to its “suc- stein (2012) argues that “the absence of engagement cess” in achieving an established place in the academy with questions about disciplines (and interdisciplinar- (Martin 2008), and as either losing or retaining its con- ity) is also a refusal…to ask what is counting as WGS, nection to political activism as it has transformed from and how, in particular contexts.” It is a refusal to ask, social movement to academic discipline (Messer-Davi- she suggests, “about the field’s subject, about its borders dow 2002; Wiegman 2002b; Orr 2012). and parameters, and about its relation to other fields of These self-reflexive assessments raise many sig- inquiry (or disciplines).” As such, interdisciplinarity as nificant questions for WGS as a field. It has achieved conceptualized in WGS would not seek to “dismantle success in many institutions, growing from loosely disciplines,” but might rather pose “a challenge to the organized programs that drew on faculty from disci- arbitrariness of disciplinary boundaries” and “call those plines across the university to departments that offer boundaries into question” (35-36). graduate programs staffed by tenure track faculty with This article constitutes a modest engagement full time appointments. The steady institutionalization, with these discussions by positioning law and legal departmentalization, and professionalization of WGS practices in the field of WGS. At a time when what we Atlantis 37.2 (2), 2016 97 www.msvu.ca/atlantis once considered fundamental rights to such things as women of color, womanism, as defined by Maparyan, is contraception, reproductive freedom, and voting are “a social change perspective…concerned with humani- under assault in countries like the United States, is there ty as a whole and the elimination of all forms of oppres- scholarly work in Women’s and Gender Studies that sion, whether named or unnamed” (27-28). A project of may help us to understand these trends and how we critical womanist legal studies, informed by Maparyan’s might respond? Is there research on law and legal prac- view of womanism and WGS as a field, may, in a modest tices in the field of WGS and in what ways, if at all, are way, help to address some of the issues raised in recent these topics worthy of scholarly attention? critical analyses of the field as it has secured greater in- The article begins by examining the extent to stitutional status and legitimacy in the academy. which law and legal practices as research topics ap- pear in major WGS journals and dissertation research. Law and Legal Practices in Current WGS Research I propose a clearer acknowledgement of law and legal Kitch and Fonow (2012) concentrated their practices as important topics in WGS and outline an ap- analysis on completed dissertations