School to host major conference on ‘The Sexual Contract’

The Law and Gender research group at the School of Law and Politics in conjunction with the Feminist Legal Studies Journal is to host a major conference on 10 to 11 May 2018. The conference will mark 30 years since the publication of Carole Pateman’s seminal work The Sexual Contract (Stanford University Press 1988).

Carole Pateman, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), will open the conference by speaking about her work. The event will involve presentations by a number of academics from a range of academic disciplines exploring how Pateman’s work has inspired their scholarship.

The conference aims to stimulate discussion of how Pateman’s critique of the orthodox social contract continues to have significance and relevance for a diverse range of themes, such as the marriage contract, the employment contract, the prostitution contract, the surrogacy contract, the settler contract and ‘new’ contracts inspired by but not appearing in Pateman’s work (including the welfare contract; the ‘justice’ contract, exploring access to justice issues; feminism and the environmental contract; debt as sexual contract).

A call for papers has now been launched. Papers are encouraged from contributors of any career level. If you are interested in presenting a paper at the conference, please submit a title and abstract of 250 words one of the organisers: Dr Sharon Thompson, Dr Lydia Hayes or Dr Dan Newman.

The deadline for receipt of abstracts has been extended to 1 March 2018. Those whose papers are accepted should prepare a presentation of 20 minutes with 10 minutes for questions and discussion.

Further details about the event will be published in due course. It is supported by the Centre of Law and Society as this years’ key annual event.