Sarah Barringer Gordon to deliver keynote address at IIT Chicago-Kent's Symposium on Women's Legal History

University of Pennsylvania legal scholar and historian to address the topic "Holy War: Women, Courts and Religion in the 1980s"

Sarah Barringer Gordon, the Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, will deliver the keynote address at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law's Symposium on Women's Legal History: A Global Perspective at 5 p.m. on October 13. Professor Gordon, a legal historian who specializes in the history of religion in America, will address the topic "Holy War: Women, Courts and Religion in the 1980s."

The two-day program will be held at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, 565 West Adams Street (between Clinton and Jefferson streets) in Chicago. The symposium is co-sponsored by Chicago-Kent's Institute for Law and the Humanities and the Chicago-Kent Law Review.

A member of the University of Pennsylvania faculty since 1994, Sarah Barringer Gordon is a widely recognized scholar and commentator on religion in American public life and the law of church and state. Her first book, The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America (University of North Carolina Press, 2002), won the Mormon History Association's and the Utah Historical Society's best book awards in 2003. Her most recent book, The Spirit of the Law: Religious Voices and the Constitution in Modern America (Harvard University Press, 2010), explores the world of church and state in the 20th century. Professor Gordon holds a bachelor's degree from Vassar College, a J.D. and a master's in divinity from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in history from Princeton University.

"The Chicago-Kent Institute for Law and the Humanities is thrilled to be holding a conference on women's legal history," said Professor Felice Batlan, co-director of the Institute for Law and the Humanities and a specialist in women's legal history. "The first conference of this kind was held at the University of Akron in 2007 and we are so pleased to be able to carry on this tradition. The interdisciplinary, intergenerational, and international approach adds to the excitement."

Panelists include legal scholars, historians, and women's studies scholars from the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom. Other speakers include Barbara Babcock of Stanford University Law School, Lloyd Bonfield of New York Law School, Lily Chang of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge, Benedetta Faedi Duramy of Golden Gate University School of Law, Susan Hinely of Stony Brook University, and Adetoun Ilumoka of the University of Western Ontario. Panelists and additional speakers include Tracey Jean Boisseau of the University of Akron, Gwen Jordan of the University of Illinois-Springfield, Mary Jane Mossman of York University's Osgoode Hall Law School, Margaret Power of Illinois Institute of Technology, Carla Spivak of the Oklahoma City University School of Law, Kara Swanson of Northeastern University, Karen Tani of the University of California-Berkeley, Tracy Thomas of The University of Akron School of Law, Deleso Alford Washington of Florida A&M University College of Law, and Mary Ziegler of St. Louis University School of Law.

Chicago-Kent College of Law is the law school of Illinois Institute of Technology, a private, Ph.D.-granting institution with programs in engineering, science, psychology, architecture, business, design and law. The Institute for Law and the Humanities was created to facilitate, support and encourage symposia, lectures, scholarship, and faculty discussion on the relationship between law and other humanistic disciplines. It provides opportunities for faculty and students to integrate humanities-based studies with the study of law and to explore the increasingly rich and diverse scholarship in areas such as legal philosophy, legal history, law and literature, and law and religion.

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