Appleton and Stiritz on Law, Literature, and the Formal and Informal Regulation of Sex

Susan Frelich Appleton, Washington University (Saint Louis) School of Law, and Susan Ekberg Stiritz, Washington University (Saint Louis) College of Arts and Sciences, have published Going Wild: Law and Literature and Sex at 69 of Studies in Law, Politics, and Society 11 (2016) (Special Issue: Feminist Legal Theory). Here is the abstract.

This paper explores four works of contemporary fiction to illuminate formal and informal regulation of sex. The paper’s co-authors frame analysis with the story of their creation of a transdisciplinary course, entitled “Regulating Sex: Historical and Cultural Encounters,” in which students mined literature for social critique, became immersed in the study of law and its limits, and developed increased sensitivity to power, its uses, and abuses. The paper demonstrates the value theoretically and pedagogically of third-wave feminisms, wild zones, and contact zones as analytic constructs and contends that including sex and sexualities in conversations transforms personal experience, education, society, and culture, including law.

 The full text is not available from SSRN.