Co-editor (with Annette Bennington McElhiney)

This pioneering anthology presents a multicultural, interdisciplinary collage of women’s experiences with the law by mixing creative and analytical writings about family, abuse, and community in the context of feminist legal and literary theories. Beyond Portia opens with grounding essays in both literary and legal theory, and offers two collections of essays, stories, and poems that focus in turn on law and literature on families, and law and literature on abuse of women. Drawing on the idea that literature by women can offer material richer than the typical case fact pattern used in traditional legal training, the editors show that both literature and literary methods of reading can help articulate otherwise unspoken premises in legal decision-making, bringing them into the open for examination.