Anna Kirkland

Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and Political Science Ph.D.  Jurisprudence and Social Policy (Berkeley 2003), J.D., Boalt Hall School of Law (Berkeley 2001).

Contact Information:
2138 Lane Hall
240 S. State St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1209
734.647.6181
Email: akirklan@umich.edu

Website:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~akirklan/index.htm

Scholarly Interests: Law and society, antidiscrimination law; gender and sexuality in contemporary U.S. law; politics of rights claiming; law and identity.

Biography: Anna Kirkland is Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and Political Science. Her research focuses on the construction of the legal categories that receive civil rights protections in various jurisdictions of the United States, particularly gender, race, sexual orientation, and disability. She studies the politics of gaining legal protections as well as the ways in which ordinary people understand and negotiate their identities through the law. She is author of Fat Rights: Dilemmas of Difference and Personhood (2008: New York University Press) and a co-editor with Jonathan Metzl of Against Health: Has Health Become the New Morality? (under contract with New York University Press). Her new project is a study of autism injury cases at the federal vaccine compensation court.   Professor Kirkland teaches courses on gender, sexuality, politics and law in Women's Studies and Political Science, and was recently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at the Michigan Law School.

Publications:

Co-editor with Jonathan Metzl, Against Health: Has Health Become the New Morality? (under contract with New York University Press).

The Environmental Account of Obesity: A Case for Feminist Skepticism,” forthcoming in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Summer 2010). 

“Revisiting Rights across Contexts: Fat, Health, and Antidiscrimination Law,” Studies in Law, Politics and Society (forthcoming Fall 2009).

Fat Rights: Dilemmas of Difference and Personhood, New York University Press, 2008. 

“Think of the Hippopotamus: Rights Consciousness in the Fat Acceptance Movement,” Law and Society Review, Vol. 42, No. 2 (June 2008), pp. 397-431. 

"What's at Stake in Transgender Discrimination as Sex Discrimination?" Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Autumn 2006.

"What's at Stake in Fatness as a Disability?," Disability Studies Quarterly, Volume 26, No. 1 (Winter 2006).

"Victorious Transsexuals in the Courtroom: A Challenge for Feminist Legal Theory," Law & Social Inquiry, Volume 28, No. 1 (March 2003): 1-37.

"Representations of Fatness and Personhood: Pro-Fat Advocacy and the Limits and Uses of Law," Representations, No. 82 (Spring 2003): 24-51.