Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Isabel Holcroft Manners was the wife of the 3rd Earl of Rutland. Nicolette Hanna-Clark was the lover of producer John Clark. They both risked their homes in courts of law. They were both threatened by the contractual rule that blocks out facts that might contradict a written contract. They were both susceptible to the renowned parol evidence rule: the former in 1604 – in what is considered to be the first contractual parol evidence rule decision - and the latter recently, in 2003. Is this a mere coincidence?
Suggesting a negative answer, this paper undertakes two deep excavations into the specifics of the legal battles of Isabel and Nicolette, placing these cases in their rich and nuanced context and using them as revealing narratives. In this feminist methodology, much inspired by new-historicist theories of representation, the paper seek to explore and expose the hegemonic nature of the parol evidence rule.
Formal, abstract, logical, rational and detached, the parol evidence rule functions as a powerful tool of control in the learned hands of self-described objective judges. Consciously and explicitly the law of contracts shuts its eyes and covers its ears, refusing to learn more about complex realities and rather preferring to adhere to the written document as the best source of knowledge for resolving what the content of the contract is. The paper investigates the deliberate efforts that were and still are made under the parol evidence rule in order to present and represent the process of contractual interpretation as if it was a “scientific” practice.
Stimulated by the theme of this annual meeting, the central argument of the paper is that in order to resist power which leads to injustice, “law and society” works must resist “law as a science” rules.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This project employs a convict perspective to challenge the fundamental premise of offender "re-entry." It is noble that we campaign against the many barriers that hinder post-incarceration success, but these processes and programs are based on a false reality. Re-entry advocacy suggests that these individuals were at one time "entered" into society. It is this distorted perception that is created, manipulated, and sold as real. In addition to the information garnered from the prison literature, this paper utilizes personal accounts of the author (an ex-convict) and her interactions with incarcerated females and the system that plays an extraordinary role in creating and maintaining a permanent underclass in this country. A significant number of women being filtered thfouth the criminal justice machinery are marginalized members of society -- they are uneducated, un-under-employed, unskilled, and often without family support. Not only will they leave prison having changed little about their pre-prison experience, but they will leave with the additional stigma of a criminal record, that not only bars them from governmental assistance and access to a number of professons, but also psychological damaged, and legally and politically disenfranchised.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The role of prior decisions in allotting positions to new book releases on the weekly lists

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this article, I compare conceptions from literature and science to map out the emergent social phenomenon of parthenogenesis, a new cloning technique for growing embryos from unfertilized human ova. Answering Squier’s (1999) call to critique science from the vantage of feminist literary criticism, I trace depictions of parthenogenesis as mechanisms of species reproduction in feminist and women-authored fiction over the last 90 years. I identify six themes from feminist fiction about parthenogenesis: reproduction is decoupled from male-female fertilization; reproduction is decoupled from men; reproduction is separated from motherhood, reproduction is separated from (hetero)sexuality; women choose to live in a man-free society; parthenogenetic embryos are legitimate human beings. These six themes contrast with scientists’ renderings that parthenogenesis is an ethical cloning option and produces parthenotes, which are not legitimate forms of human life. However, the six themes are reflected in media and bioethcists’ accounts of parthenogenesis in the form of backlash against a potential women and/or lesbian-only society.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Sociological conversations about cultural products like books have a long history, to which this paper contributes. In addition, sociologists have long been interested in questions about how social norms and ideas are sometimes reproduced and sometimes resisted. This paper is rooted in a tradition of sociologists who study the novel as a source of data. Like these sociologists, I look to the American novel for information about social ideologies and structured representations; like them, I look to the history of American book publishing for information about how texts come to exist and circulate. Unlike them, though, I focus on the cultural content and publishing history of American children’s novels, and on each text’s willingness to resist the reproduction of dominant social arrangements which are based upon inequality.
Further, literary scholars argue that modern feminist fiction emerged during the 1970s, as a component of second wave feminist political activity. This sociological study also critiques and transforms definitions of ‘the feminist novel,’ and suggests that feminist, or subversive, children’s novels existed well before the late-twentieth-century eruption of second wave feminism. By using a less-individualistic theory of social stratification and resistance than previous research, the paper uncovers a range of narrative strategies that explicate and resist overlapping forms of oppression. This paper conceptualizes children’s novels as (potentially) containing narratives of resistance, which permits a connection to feminist theories of narratives, since they offer the best models for these types of questions and goals.