Faculty of Law University of Toronto
Law & Literature Workshop Series
2007 - 2008
presents
Bennett Capers
Hofstra University School of Law
Cross Dressing and the Criminal
Thursday, November 8, 2007
12:30 - 2:00
Solarium, Falconer Hall
84 Queen's Park
Toronto Canada M5C 2C5
Cross Dressing and the Criminal argues that cross dressing--as a metaphor, as a sign, as a practice--has the potential to subvert not only expectations about gender, but also about race, sexuality, class, and status. Taking up Judith Butler's suggestion that feminism could benefit from serious play, borrowing from literature, and turning to the criminal arena, this brief essay conceptualizes a justice system in which officers, prosecutors, jurors, and judges engage in imaginative acts of cross dressing in cases where implicit biases may be present. Such imaginative acts, I argue, would not only have the salutary effect of foregrounding such biases. It would also allow decision-makers to override them.
Professor Bennett Capers graduated from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and holds a Bachelor of Arts in literature from Princeton University. Following law school, he served as a law clerk to Judge John S. Martin, Jr., in the Southern District of New York before joining the Department of Justice as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. During his nine years as an assistant U.S. attorney, he prosecuted hundreds of federal cases, and tried approximately 20, ranging from RICO murders to insider trading, and argued numerous appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He also served on the Capital Review Committee. In 2004, he was nominated for the Department of Justice's Director's Award for his prosecution of Tito's Crew, a drug gang that engaged in murder-for-hire and was responsible for approximately 18 homicides in New York during the early 1990s, including the murders of two informants and an attorney. Immediately prior to joining the Hofstra faculty, Professor Capers practiced at Willkie Farr & Gallagher in New York City, and was an adjunct associate professor at Brooklyn Law School. His scholarship explores the dialogic relationship between culture and law, and has appeared or is forthcoming in the California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Hofstra Law Review, Howard Law Journal, Indiana Law Journal, NYU Review of Law and Social Change, and Michigan Journal of Race and Law.
A light lunch will be provided.
Co-sponsored by Sexual Diversity Studies and the Women & Gender Studies Institute
For more workshop information, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca
