Imagine taking a class that isn’t limited to one professor. Instead, each week brings a new teacher and a new perspective to the same theme.
That’s exactly what The University of Baltimore School of Law students love about the Special Topics in Applied Feminism course.
One week the topic was about human trafficking and the sex trade. Another week turned focus to gendered impacts of crime-free housing laws on mothers and abuse survivors. Other weeks examine Title IX, feminist approaches to international law, and feminism and data (in)justice. Over 14 weeks, students hear from 13 lecturers.
Each class prompts a new discussion and promises new perspectives, as students take turns reflecting their professor’s expertise with their own experiences.
The course—offered every other year—fills easily and consistently earns high praise.
“Any differing of opinions or perspectives received from those already doing the work—that we, the learners, aspire to do some day—is an overall elevated learning experience,” said Quinesha Burden, a third-year evening student. “I have been enjoying the differing of perspectives that professors have to offer.”
The law school’s Center on Applied Feminism sponsors this course. Center directors and law school professors, Michele Gilman and Margaret Johnson, developed it in 2014. Students were clamoring for more curriculum covering issues of gender justice, Gilman said.
“Students are craving ways to understand the world around them,” she said. “Many students are interested in issues of social justice and want to use their legal training to engage on those issues.”
The idea to invite their colleagues as co-professors was the innovative touch students weren’t expecting but came to love.
“Students can immerse themselves in a theoretical model and consider it from a variety of perspectives that a single professor could not offer,” Gilman said. “They are exposed to the broad expertise of their faculty while also digging deeply into feminist legal theory. This model works due to our engaged faculty and the excitement of students to learn in from a theoretical perspective.”
Pointing to course feedback, Gilman noted several past students enjoyed having different professors each week. One student comment noted that diversity helped them to see the interwoven thread across the various courses they had taken over their three years at the law school. Another shared appreciation for the broad range of materials that the professors recommended, bringing into the one course even more viewpoints and knowledge.
Gilman said they put out a request to their law school colleagues to teach one class from a feminist legal theory frame. Some professors have been teaching in the course since its start.
Shanta Trivedi, an assistant professor of law and faculty director for the Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children and the Courts, led Week 6: The Child Welfare System’s Treatment of Mothers.
She used slides for enough of an overview of the laws to prompt a discussion with the students, urging their opinions on different scenarios. She gave the students time to consider how the system might conflate poverty with bad parenting, and how they might approach certain cases from the legal perspective.
Trivedi said she likes being part of a course where students get to hear from professors they know in new ways and can be introduced to professors who teach outside of their areas of scholarship.
“Professor [Dan] Hatcher teaches Contracts and many students have no idea about the incredible research that he does on the ways that companies and state actors profit off of the backs of poor people. Professor Gilman may have taught them Evidence, but students do not know of her passionate scholarship about poverty, privacy and increasingly about data privacy,” Trivedi said. “I think that they see a different side of their professors. And for professors they haven’t met yet, they may learn that they’re interested in something they never thought they might be!”
Shayne Lowman, a third-year law student, is familiar with Gilman and Johnson as a research assistant in the law school’s Center for Applied Feminism.
Lowman was excited for a course that gave her more learning time with professors she already loves. Echoing Trivedi, she has enjoyed seeing the familiar topic through new lenses as well.
“I love the exposure to these different areas of law and how they can intersect with feminism and foster progressive change,” Lowman said. “I think, too, it's great to have better connections with the professors. Some I've taken, some I haven't, so getting to reconnect with some professors and then meeting some new ones for the first time has been really incredible. Through their scholarship work, getting to see how change is possible through these different legal fields has been really cool.”
Hannah Jones, a second-year law student, was drawn to the course after attending an event where Johnson spoke about reproductive justice and its relation to the due process clause.
A chance to learn from Johnson and more professors was too good to miss.
“Getting different perspectives from different professors is one of my favorite aspects of the class,” Jones said. “I think this elevates my learning experience because it introduced me to new professors, allowed me to catch up with professors from 1L and it exposed me to so many different areas of law. I enjoy that every class is different. For example, we conducted a mock hearing one week, which has definitely helped prepare me for after law school.”
The course is a golden opportunity for the professors, too.
Johnson loves teaching the special topics course because through it, she said, the applied nature of the feminist legal theory really comes to fruition.
She remembers one year when she taught a class on menstrual justice. She had the students read her and other professors’ scholarship on the topic. First, she challenged them to write memos about the readings and ways in which they could see connections to different things happening in the law school. Seeing the results, she then asked if any students wanted to take the lesson further and research whether these issues were experienced by other students. Four volunteered.
“They crafted a survey instrument, investigated people’s experiences and then wrote a memo to the administration communicating these issues. The administration was excited to learn of the issues and worked hard to accommodate them,” Johnson said.
As a result of their work, the school added free menstrual products in all the bathrooms and the dean invited the students to speak to the faculty about the importance of bathroom breaks to attend to menstruation.
“Through this process, the students felt empowered, admired the administration for its responsiveness, and felt heard by the faculty who thanked the students for coming and explaining the dilemmas some students experienced when menstruating,” Johnson said. “To me, this entire experience encapsulated the best of this course. It helps law students understand not only the legal theory of gender, but also how it can be applied in action, and then, can even extend to opportunities to apply their learning to achieve greater justice.”