Read Mary Wollstonecraft

Read Mary Wollstonecraft.
That advice was at the core of the keynote speech that Amartya Sen delivered yesterday to open the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law, under way through Saturday in Washington, D.C. (Prior posts available here.)
In his address on the history and nature of human rights, Sen, a Harvard professor and winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in economics, Sen referred frequently to Wollstonecraft (right). (image credit)
As we've posted, Wollstonecraft, an IntLawGrrls foremother, was born in 1759 in London. She was a noted theorist and intellectual during her short life -- she died in 1797 giving birth to Mary Shelley, future author of Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft often is categorized as a feminist, but Sen described her more generally, as

'the most neglected thinker of the Enlightenment period.'

Wollstonecraft's works included A Vindication of the Rights of Women, A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, occaisioned by his Reflections on the Revolution in France, and and various travelogues. Insights within these works, Sen said, include:
► Demonstration that rights were not dependent on legislation, but rather could serve as a precedent inspiration for legislating human rights; and
► Emphasis on the importance of rights within the family.
Sen further noted the "very strong normative claim" about rights made by another Englishwoman about whom we've posted: suffragist Christabel Pankhurst (below right). In 1911, nearly 2 decades before British legislation would accord women the vote, Pankhurst said:

'We are here to claim our rights as women. Not only to be free, but also to fight for freedom.'

As the discussant at yesterday's lecture, our colleague and Princeton Professor Kim Lane Scheppele, said, this emphasis on the capabilities of individuals to open doors to opportunities is central to Sen's thinking -- thinking that, in her view, could benefit from greater engagement with the significance of law in effecting human rights.

Guest Blogger: Mia Swart

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Dr. Mia Swart (left) as today's guest blogger.

Mia's an Assistant Professor of Public International law and Global Justice at Leiden University, the Netherlands, from which she earned her Ph.D. in 2006. Under the supervision of Professor John Dugard and funded by Huygens and Mandela scholarships, she completed a thesis was on the topic of Judicial Lawmaking at the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunals.
Mia's based at Leiden's Hague campus, affiliated with its law faculty and Grotius Centre. She also holds the title of Honorary Associate Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she was previously worked as Associate Professor. She is also a research associate of the South African Institute of Advanced Constitutional, Public and International Law.

Published in the areas of transitional justice, international criminal law, and comparative constitutional law, Mia currently focuses her research on apartheid reparations. Her guest post below considers lessons learned from South Africa's apartheid era with respect to detention practices.
In 2007 and 2009, Mia received a Humboldt research fellowship to do research at the Max Planck Institute in Freiburg and at Berlin's Humboldt University, from which she holds an LL.M. She worked as an intern in the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 2001, the same year she was admitted as an attorney.
Mia chooses to honor as her foremother Olive Schreiner (1855-1920), a South African author, feminist, and antiwar campaigner about whom we've posted. Mia writes of Schreiner (below right):

She can be described as one of the most interesting and influential South African intellectuals of her time. She is most famous for her novel The Story of an African Farm, a novel portraying elementary life on the colonial frontier. The novel considered issues such as individualism and the treatment of women. She also wrote Women and Labour in which she argues that women and men should be treated and compensated equally in the workplace. She also argued for the rights of black people and other groups she perecived as being sidelined by British Imperialism. Although she is often described as a feminist and pacifist her true views escape categorisation. She was the deputy president of the Cape Town branch of the Women's Enfranchisement League. She was friends with Emily Hobhouse (a British nurse who protested against the treatment of Afrikaner women and children in British concentration camps during the Boer War) and with British intellectuals such as Mary Wollstonecraft.

Today Schreiner joins other foremothers -- including Mary Wollstonecraft -- on IntLawGrrls' list just below the "visiting from..." map at right.
Heartfelt welcome!

On March 11

On this day in ...
... 1818, a short, gothic novel entitled Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus 1st was published. The author was 21-year-old Mary Shelley (left), who'd written it while still a teenager. She was the daughter of 2 political writers: her mother was feminist and IntLawGrrls foremother Mary Wollstonecraft, who died during the birth of this child. Mary Shelley wrote in an 1831 edition of the novel that it was her husband, the poet Percy Shelley, who effectively put the pen in her hand. He was, she wrote,

very anxious that I should prove myself Worthy of my parentage and enrol myself on the page of fame. He was forever Inciting me to obtain literary reputation, which even on my own part I cared for Then, though since I have become infinitely indifferent to it. At this time he Desired that I should write, not so much with the idea that I could produce Anything worthy of notice, but that he might himself judge how far I possessed The promise of better things hereafter.

The endurance of the story in popular culture attests to the worth of her endeavor.

(Prior March 11 posts are here, here, and here)

Guest Blogger: Staci Strobl

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Dr. Staci Strobl (left) as today's guest blogger.
Staci's an Assistant Professor in the Department of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. She completed her Ph.D. in Criminal Justice, with a specialization in Comparative Criminal Justice and Criminology, at CUNY’s Graduate Center; received her M.A. in Criminal Justice at John Jay; and earned her B.A. in Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. Before joining John Jay as a faculty member, Staci was editor of the CUNY Dispute Resolution Consortium’s Compendium of Working Papers. She also has been a U.S. Probation Officer and a crime journalist. Among her areas of expertise, as is evident in her list of publications: "comic book portrayals of crime in the United States."
Recently, Staci was the recipient of a Fulbright grant to Bahrain, where she completed an ethnographic study of policewomen. Her guest post below discusses an article of hers that's an outgrowth of that research -- a study of the country's criminalization of domestic workers.
Staci dedicates her post to Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), who, as IntLawGrrls has posted, was "a feminist, author, and intellectual inspired by the ideals of the French revolutionary era," and the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). Staci writes of Wollstonecraft (right):

Her work was an important part of my development as a feminist when I first read her work in high school. Though she is probably not the most glamorous of foremothers since she is required reading (!), I think her work is a good reminder of how everything had to/has to be fought for, including that women be considered as fundamentally rational creatures like all other humans.

Today Wollstonecraft joins other foremothers in IntLawGrrls' list just below the "visiting from..." map at right.
Heartfelt welcome!