26026 - Women And Law

Learning outcomes

Students will explore legal feminism and learn to engage critically with a range of ideas in a gender-sensitive way, tackling topics like law as a tool for freedom, gendered law, discrimination, and human rights.

Course contents

THIS COURSE WILL BE HELD ENTIRELY IN ENGLISH

In this course, the historical relationship between women and the law will serve as a point of departure for rethinking both strategic engagements with the legal sphere and the mobilizations and experiments unfolding beyond it—in the extralegal terrain of other forms of justice, needs, claims, and desires articulated by those inhabiting unjust intersectional geographies in an era marked by increasingly violent intimate and social manifestations of the ecosystemic crisis.

In an initial, introductory phase, we will examine key positions in feminist legal theory and the struggles undertaken by women within the legal domain in the so-called Global North, with particular attention to issues of legal and citizenship recognition, as well as the indispensable question of reproductive rights. We will also engage with feminist critiques of the very institution of law: drawing on texts such as Sexual Difference: A Theory of Social-Symbolic Practice by the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective, juridical categories themselves will be critically examined through perspectives that envision alternative modes of thought and community organization.

The Western context will be treated as a point of departure for an analysis that consistently foregrounds the global entanglements through which jurisprudence intersects with political economy, coloniality, international law, and global governance. A decolonial approach will thus be central to the course, grounded in a situated perspective—beginning with that of the instructor—that will give substance to political reflections aimed at making visible and meaningful those histories and insights that exceed self-referential forms of localization.

With a clear awareness of the ambivalence inherent in legal and juridical frameworks, the course will proceed to a focused analysis of key tensions and critical junctures shaping the present.

1. Reproductive Rights (Balzano; Clarke; Cooper; Cooper & Waldby; Hanafin; Lewis).
   
   
2. Reproductive Justice (Benjamin; Brown; da Silva; Krauss; Murphy; Elias; Ross & Solinger; TallBear).
   
   
3. Abolitionism (Davis; Davis, Dent, Meiners & Richie; Lamble; Gilmore).
   
   
4. Transformative Justice (Kim; European Alternatives; Palomba; Peroni; Verdolini; Virgilio).
   
   
5. Citizenship (Hawthorne; Rose).
   
   
6. Ecological Justice (Balzano; Brown; De Chiro; Iengo).

Readings/Bibliography

References

Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective, Sexual Difference: A Theory of Social-Symbolic Practice, translated by Patricia Cicogna and Teresa de Lauretis, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1990. (Chapter 2)
&
Giardini, Federica e Anna Simone, Reproduction as Paradigm. Elements Toward a Feminist Political Economy, in Maria Hlavajova, Simon Sheikh (eds.), Former West. Art and the Contemporary after 1989, Cambridge, Mass., The M.I.T. Press, 2017.

1. Reproductive Rights – choose one of the following readings:

   Balzano, Angela, “Biology Commodification and Women Self-Determination. Beyond the Surrogacy Ban”, in Italian Sociological Review, 10 (3), 655-677, 2020.

   Balzano, Angela “Escaping Pro-life Neo-fascism in Italy: Affirmative and Collective Lines of Flight”, in Rick Dolphijn and Rosi Braidotti (edited by), Deleuze and Guattari and Fascism, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2022.

   Cooper Melinda, “The Unborn Born Again. Neo-Imperialism, the Evangelical Right, and the Culture of Life”, in Life as Surplus. Biotechnology and Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era, University of Washington Press, Washington, 2008.

   Cooper, Melinda and Catherine Waldby, “Fertility Outsourcing. Contract, Risk, and Assisted Reproductive Technology”, in Clinical Labor, Tissue Donors and Research Subjects in the Global Bioeconomy, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2014.

   Hanafin, Patrick, Conceiving Life. Reproductive Politics and the Law in Contemporary Italy, Ashgate, Brulington, 2007. (Introduction and Chapter 4)

   Lewis, Sophie, “Cyborg Uterine Gepgraphy: Complicating Care and Social Reproduction”, Dialogues in Human Geography, 8: 300-316, 2018.
   
   
   

2. Reproductive Justice – choose one of the following readings:

   Benjamin, Ruha, “Black AfterLives Matter: Cultivating Kinfulness as Reproductive Justice”, in Adele Clarke and Donna Haraway (edited by), Making Kin not Population, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2018.

   Brown, Wilmette, roots: Black Ghetto Ecology, Housewifes in Dialogue, Lonon, 1986.
   &
   Elias, Sol, “Reclaiming Reproductive Justice: the Combahee River Collective and a Call for a Black Feminist Homecoming”, available on Black Women Radicals, 2025.
   
   Ftouni, Layal, "'They Make Death, and I’m the Labor of Love' . Palestinian Prisoners’ Sperm Smuggling as an Affirmation of Life", in Critical Times, 7, 1, 2024.
   &
   Timeto, Federica e Maddalena Fragnito, "Spermology of the nation. Fertility ideology and settlement colonialism in Israel", in About Gender, 14, 27, 2025.
   

   Ferreira da Silva, Denise, Unpetable Debt, Stendberg Press, London, 2019. One chapter of your choice.

   Krauss, Celine, Mothering at the Crossroads. African American Women and the Emergence of the Movement Against Environmental Racism, in F. C. Stedy (edited by), Environmental Justice in the New Millennium. Global Perspectives on Race, Ethnicity and Human Rights, Palgarve MacMillan, New York, 2009,

   Murphy, Michelle, “Against Population, Towards Alterlife”, in Adele Clarke and Donna Haraway (edited by), Making Kin not Population, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2018.

   Ross, Loretta and Rickie Solinger, Reproductive Justice. An Introduction, Oakland 2017. One chapter of your choice.

   TallBear, Kim, “Making Love and Relations Beyond Settler Sex and Family”, in Adele Clarke and Donna Haraway (edited by), Making Kin not Population, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2018.
   
   
   

3. Abolitionism – choose one of the following readings:

   Davis, Angela, Are Prisons Obsolete?, Seven Stories Press, New York, 2003. One chapter of your choice.

   Davis, Angela, Dent, Gina, Meiners, Erica R. e Richie, Beth E., Abolition. Feminism. Now., Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2022. One chapter of your choice.

   Gilmore, Ruth Wilson, Abolition Geography. Essays Towards Liberation, Verso, London – New York, 2022. One chapter of your choice.
   
   
   

4. Transformative Justice – choose one of the following readings:

   European Alternatives, Feminist Futures of Justice: Towards a Transformative Horizon, available on European Alternatives, London – Bruxelles, 2021.

   Kim, Mimi, “From Carceral Feminism to Transformative Justice: Women‑of‑Color Feminism and Alternatives to Incarceration”, in Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work, 27, n. 3, pp. 219–233, 2018.
   
   
   

5. Citizenship – choose one of the following readings:

   Hawthorne, Camilla, Contesting Race and Citizenship: Youth Politics in the Black Mediterranean, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 2022. One chapter of your choice.

   Hawthorne, Camilla and Angelica Pesarini, “US Aims to Abolish Birthright Citizenship: Italy Already Knows the Consequences”, available on American Community Media, 2025.

   Rose, Nikolas, “The Politics of Life Itself”, in Theory, Culture & Society, 18/6, 1-30, 2001.
   
   
   

6. Ecological Justice – choose one of the following readings:
   
   Balzano, Angela, “Composting in Plastic Wombs with Siso the Sperm Whale”, available on Unruly Natures – Journal – Politics of Nature, Field Notes, 2024.
   
   Di Chiro, Giovanna, “Living environmentalisms: coalition politics, social reproduction, and environmental justice”, in Environmental Politics, vol. 17, n. 2, pp. 276–298, 2008.
   
   Iengo, Ilenia, “Endometriosis and Environmental Violence: An Embodied, Situated Ecopolitics from the Land of Fires”, in Environmental Humanities, vol. 14, n. 2, pp. 341–360, 2022.

 

Teaching methods

The course will be held in English.

70% lectures

10% seminars with outside experts

20% active class involvement (discussions, labs/readings)

Assessment methods

Final Assessment

For attending students, the final exam will consist of the following components:

a) An in-class presentation on one of the topics discussed during the course. The class will be invited to engage presenters with reflections and questions. Students are required to discuss their chosen topic with the professor in advance.

b) A short paper (approximately 5–7 pages; the professor is open to slightly longer submissions if needed), developing one or more topics addressed in the course. The topic must be agreed upon with the professor in advance. This preliminary dialogue includes sharing a brief abstract and a provisional bibliography, with the aim of fostering constructive exchange and ensuring a fair evaluation of the work.

c) An oral examination, consisting of a discussion with the professor of the written paper. During this conversation, students may be asked to draw connections between their paper and other relevant themes explored in the course.

d) If, for any reason, a student is unable to deliver an in-class presentation, they are encouraged to contact the professor in advance to arrange an alternative form of assessment that respects both academic integrity and individual needs.

Please note that the instructor has designed these three steps as distinct moments within a single, continuous process of elaboration. The structure is intended to:

• identify a topic around which to begin shaping a research project to be presented in class, allowing for early feedback and initial refinement;

• proceed with the writing of a paper, following a phase of development and collective discussion;

• conclude the process with a one-on-one discussion with the instructor for final evaluation.

However, students are free to choose to present on a topic different from the one they develop in their written paper and final discussion.

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For non-attending students: the exam format must be discussed in advance with the professor.

Office hours

See the website of Elisa Bosisio