The Baldy Center Podcast

Episode 15 features Athena Mutua, Professor and Law and Floyd H. & Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar in the University at Buffalo School of Law. Professor Mutua discusses the origins and goals of ClassCrits, which focuses on the heterodox, or political economy approach in law. She presents the new online journal, The Journal of Law and Political Economy and discusses ways in which ClassCrits engages with ongoing and on the ground activist work in significant social issues.

Keywords: ClassCrits; Gender, Law, and Society; Inequality; Law and Economics; Law and Society; Race, Law, and Policy.

Athena Mutua, Professor, Floyd H. & Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar, University at Buffalo School of Law, writes in the areas of critical race and feminist legal theory. Her work includes the edited collection Progressive Black Masculinities (Routledge, 2006) and articles titled “Restoring Justice to Civil Rights Movement Activists: New Historiography and the ‘Long Civil Rights Era’ ” (2008); “The Rise, Development, and Future Directions of Critical Race Theory” (Denver University Law Review, 2006); and “Gender Equality and Women’s Solidarity Across Religious, Ethnic, and Class Difference in the Kenya Constitutional Review Process” in the William and Mary Journal of Women and Law (2006). The latter article involved activism and research for which she received the University of Buffalo Exceptional Scholars Young Investigator’s Award.

Mutua's article “Introducing ClassCrits: From Class Blindness to a Critical Legal Analysis of Economic Inequality” (Buffalo Law Review, 2008) explores issues of race and gender as they relate to class structures and introduces the concepts and boundaries of ClassCrits, a project she helped found.