Norman Freehling Visiting Fellow
About
“Assumptions of Risk: Narratives of Gender, Complicity, and Culpability”
Assumptions of Risk engages legal and sociological research, oral histories, and cultural artifacts to craft a narrative history of gender and law. Through case studies, the project explores intersecting ways in which women have been held accountable for aiding, abetting, or enabling harm. The project examines the interactive—and underdiscussed—interplay among gender, risk, and shifting boundaries of accountability, interrogating how deeply-held assumptions about gender impact women’s treatment in and by the legal systems in obvious and less visible ways. The stories that laws and legal cases tell cannot be understood in isolation but require connection, interpretation, and location within temporal and cultural frameworks. This project will culminate in a monograph that tells a story of women, risk, and law situated in the context of changing norms in US society.
Francine Banner is an Associate Professor Behavioral Sciences, U-M Dearborn.
