Riley Clare Valentine and Zane McNeill: THE COERCIVE POWER OF THE LAW

In The Coercive Power of the Law: Vulnerable Bodies and Boundaries of Perception, Riley Clare Valentine and Zane McNeill advocate for an ethics of care, and explore the interplay between law, care ethics, and the body.

They emphasize how legal systems both reflect societal values and regulate and discipline bodies and sexualities that deviate from normative standards, branding them as deviant or pathological. And they imagine new ways of being and caring for one another.

Both authors will join us at Bird in Hand on January 10th to discuss these contexts and possibilities, and bring their academic work to a wide public audience. We hope you can join us, and feel inspired.

Order THE COERCIVE POWER OF THE LAW here!

Riley Clare Valentine is a political theorist who received their Ph.D. from Louisiana State University. Their work focuses on care ethics as a political ethic and disability studies critiques of legal embodiment. Their books include Progressive Liberalism and Neoliberalism in American Politics (Palgrave 2024) and Be Gay, Do Crime (PM Press 2025). Valentine's work can be found in journals such as Disability & Society as well as Medicine, Healthcare and Philosophy.

Zane McNeill has an MA from Central European University and a JD from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. He is the editor of Y'all Means All: The Emerging Voices Queering Appalachia (PM Press, 2022 and co-editor of Deviant Hollers: Queering Appalachian Ecologies for a Sustainable Future (University of Kentucky Press, 2024) and Be Gay, Do Crime: Everyday Acts of Queer Resistance and Rebellion (PM Press, 2025).

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