Visiting Assistant Professor
Program for the Study of Women and Gender
Wright Hall 115; (413)585-3627
cbaker@email.smith.edu
Office hours: Tuesday and Thursday 1:00-2:00 and by appt

B.A. Philosophy, Yale University
M.A., Ph.D., J.D. Emory University

I became interested in women’s studies during my senior year at Yale where, as a philosophy major, I took Introduction to Women’s Studies on a whim. The class was a life-changing experience for me. In it I found words and concepts to explain feelings and thoughts I’d had all my life but had never known how to articulate. Three years later, in 1990, I enrolled in the first class of the first U.S. women’s studies Ph.D. program at Emory University. I combined a Ph.D. and a J.D., focusing on law, social movements, and feminist legal and political theory. While in law school, I served as Editor-in-Chief of the Emory Law Journal and after law school clerked for two years for United States District Court Judge Marvin Shoob in Atlanta. I was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies at Emory University for a year and then taught at Berry College, a small liberal arts college outside of Atlanta, where I served as Director of Women’s Studies, Coordinator of Interdisciplinary Studies, and Chair of the Sociology and Anthropology Department.

My primary areas of research are women’s legal history, gender and public policy, and women’s social movements. I have published on sexual harassment, domestic violence, and media representations of women. My research has been published in Feminist Studies, Women in Politics, The Journal of Women’s History, NWSA Journal, The Journal of Law and Inequality, Emory Law Journal, and the online journal Women and Social Movements in the United States. My book The Women's Movement Against Sexual Harassment in the United States (Cambridge University Press, 2007) examines how a diverse grassroots social movement placed sexual harassment on the public agenda in the 1970s and 1980s. The collaboration of women from various racial, economic, and geographic backgrounds strengthened the movement by incorporating the experiences and perspectives of a broad range of women, as well as their resources and strategies for social change. The movement included black women, middle-class feminists, women breaking into construction, coal mining, and other non-traditional occupations, and women in pink-collar and working-class white-collar jobs. These women all helped to convince governments to adopt public policies against sexual harassment in the United States. Based on interviews and original research, this book shows how the movement against sexual harassment fundamentally changed American life in ways that continue to advance women's opportunities today. My current research focuses on domestic and international sex trafficking and strategies for using a human rights framework to combat violence against women in the United States.

In addition to my academic work in women’s studies and law, I have an extensive background in legal activism, including staffing the Georgia Supreme Court Commission on Gender Bias in the Courts, serving as a legal intern at NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York City, serving on the board of a local battered women’s shelter, and serving on the Georgia Supreme Court Commission on Fairness and Access to the Courts. Recently, I have been working closely with NARAL to increase women’s access to emergency contraception.

At Smith this year, I will be teaching classes on gender and law, sexual harassment, and sex trafficking, as well as co-teaching the introductory women and gender studies course.