Patricia J. Williams
University Distinguished Professor of Law and Humanities
Education
Harvard University, JD 1975
Bio
Professor Williams, one of the most provocative intellectuals in American law and a pioneer of both the law and literature and critical race theory movements in American legal theory, holds a joint appointment between the School of Law and the Department of Philosophy and Religion in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities. She is also director of Law, Technology and Ethics Initiatives in the School of Law and the College of Social Sciences and Humanities.
Professor Williams has published widely in the areas of race, gender, literature and law. Her books, including The Alchemy of Race and Rights (Harvard University Press, 1991), illustrate some of America’s most complex societal problems and challenge our ideas about socio-legal constructs of race and gender. Her work remains at the cutting edge of legal scholarship. Drawing on her prior interrogation of race, gender and personhood, Professor Williams’ current research raises core questions of individual autonomy and identity in the context of legal and ethical debates on science and technology. Her work in the area of health and genetics, for example, questions how racial formation is shaped by the legal regulation of private industry and government. Her work on algorithms grapples with the auditing function of technology in our everyday lives — shaping how we understand who we are.
Professor Williams has authored hundreds of essays, book reviews and articles for leading journals, popular magazines and newspapers, including the Guardian, Ms., The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Washington Post. For many years, she wrote a monthly column in The Nation. She has appeared on such radio and television shows as “All Things Considered,” “Fresh Air,” “Talk of the Nation” and “Today.” She has appeared in a number of documentary films, including “That Rush!” (1995), which she wrote and narrated. Directed by British film-maker Isaac Julien, this short study of American talk show hosts was featured as part of an installation at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London.
The Alchemy of Race and Rights was named one of the 25 best books of 1991 by the Voice Literary Supplement; one of the “feminist classics of the last 20 years” that “literally changed women’s lives” by Ms. magazine; and one of the 10 best non-fiction books of the decade by Amazon.com. Professor Williams’ other books include The Miracle of the Black Leg: Notes on Race, Human Bodies, and the Spirit of the Law (The New Press, 2024), Giving A Damn: Racism, Romance and Gone with the Wind (HarperCollins, 2021), The Rooster’s Egg (Harvard Press, 1995), Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1998) and Open House: Of Family, Food, Piano Lessons, and the Search for a Room of My Own (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2004).
Professor Williams has held fellowships at the School of Criticism and Theory at Dartmouth, the Humanities Research Institute of the University of California at Irvine, the Institute for Arts and Civic Dialogue at Harvard, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies at Harvard. She has received awards from the American Educational Studies Association and the National Organization for Women, among others. In 2019, she was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society. In 2000, Professor Williams was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship.
Professor Williams’ current research agenda includes three books in progress: The Complete Mad Law Professor (compilation of The Nation columns); The Talking Helix (focused on bioethics and genetics); and Gathering the Ghosts (a literary and historical text based on Professor Williams’ family archival materials). In addition, she is working on a documentary film that knits together a narratively linked series of video images about the deaths of unarmed citizens beginning with Trayvon Martin.
Professor Williams previously served as the James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia Law School.
Fields of Expertise
- Bioethics
- Critical Race Theory
- Gender and the Law
- Genetics
- Health Law and Policy
- Law and Literature
- Technology
Selected Works
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- The Talking Helix (forthcoming)
- The Complete Mad Law Professor (compilation of The Nation columns, forthcoming).
- Giving A Damn: Racism, Romance and Gone with the Wind (HarperCollins, 2021)
- Open House: On Family, Food, Piano Lessons, and The Search for a Room of My Own (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2005).
- Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1998).
- The Rooster’s Egg (Harvard Press, 1997).
- The Alchemy of Race and Rights: A Diary of a Law Professor (Harvard University Press, 1992).
- The Talking Helix (forthcoming)
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- “Torn Apart,” The New York Review (December 5, 2024).
- “Expanding the Vocabulary,” The New York Review (November 7, 2024).
- “The Paper Chase: A Reflection Upon Professor Asad Rahim’s The Legitimacy Trap,” 104 Boston University Law Review 1 (2024).
- “The DNA Dreams of the New Eugenics,” Los Angeles Review of Books (September 18, 2024).
- “Skittles as Matterphor,” 24 Theory & Event 356 (2021).
- “History of Eugenics: “Intimacy and The Traumatic History of ‘In-law’ and ‘Outlaw’ Family,” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies (2018).
- “Gathering the Ghosts,” The A-Line: A Journal of Progressive Thought (2018).
- “Babies, Bodies, Buyers,” 33 Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 11 (2016).
- “Returning to the Puritans,” 14 Common-place: Journal of the American Antiquarian Society (2014).
- “Chasing Identity,” 27 Genewatch Magazine (2014) (co-authored).
- “Privacy In the Age of Genomics,” 27 Genewatch Magazine (2014).
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- “The Endless Looping of Public Health and Scientific Racism,” in Assessing Legal Responses to COVID-19. Boston: Public Health Law Watch (2020). Northeastern University School of Law Research Paper No. 393-2020.
- “Afterword,” in Beyond Bioethics: Toward a New Biopolitics, eds. O. Obasagie et al, (University of California Press, 2018).
- “Foreword,” American Cocktail: A “Colored Girl” in the World, by Anita Reynolds (Harvard University Press, 2014).
- “The Raw and The Half-Cooked,” in The Humanities and Public Life, ed. Peter Brooks, (Fordham University Press, 2014).
- “Foreword,” Blind Goddess: A Reader on Race and Justice, ed. Alexander Papachristou (The New Press, 2011).
- “The Elusive Variability of Race,” in Race and the Genetic Revolution: Science, Myth and Culture, eds. S. Krimsky et al. (Columbia University Press, 2011).
- “The Death of the Profane,” in A Civil Rights Reader: American Literature from Jim Crow Reconciliation, eds. A. Schmidt et al. (University of Georgia Press, 2009).
- “Race and Gender,” in Theorizing Feminism: Parallel Trends in the Humanities and Social Sciences, eds. A. Herrmann et al. (Perseus Press, 2000).
- “American Kabuki,” Birth of a Nation ‘Hood: Gaze, Script and Spectacle in the OJ Simpson Trial, ed. Toni Morrison (Vintage Press, 1997).
- “A Rare Case Study of Muleheadedness and Men,” Race-ing Justice, Engendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas and the Construction of Social Reality, ed. T. Morrison (Pantheon Press, 1992).
- “Finding Ways,” Malcolm X: In Our Own Image, ed. Joe Wood (St. Martin’s Press, 1992).
- “Contracted Women,” Feminist Legal Theory: Readings in Law and Gender, eds. K. Bartlett et al. (Westview Press, 1991).
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- “AALS Section on Race and Private Law Establishes Annual Award in Honor of Professor Patricia J. Williams,” Northeastern Law News Announcement (December 12, 2024).
- “Expanding the Vocabulary," New York Review (November 7 , 2024).
- “Legal Scholar Patricia Williams Explores Race, Bodily Integrity and Law in ‘The Miracle of the Black Leg’,” Northeastern Global News (July 18, 2024).
- “CBH Talk | Women + Justice Part 1: Yesterday,” Center for Brooklyn History (March 8, 2023).
- “The Prying Eyes of Social Media,” The Nation (September 20, 2022).
- “Remembering the Clarion Call of Bell Hooks,” The Nation (December 21, 2021).
- “How NOT to Talk About Race,” The Nation (October 18, 2021).
- “Untethered, or The Year of Living Virtually,” The Nation (July 14, 2021).
- “Stop Getting Married On Plantations,” The Nation (October 14, 2019).
- “Boris Johnson Interviewed Me for His Column. Here’s What Didn’t Make It Into Print,” The Nation (July 27, 2019).
- “Artificial Intelligence Is Failing Humans,” The Nation (July 16, 2019).
Patricia J. Williams
University Distinguished Professor of Law and Humanities