Judith HolmesSenior Lecturer, Political Science in Legal Studies |
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Legal Studies Undergraduate Program Director, Adjunct Professor, History Interests: My courses in the Legal Studies major combine my research interests in law, politics and history with my previous experience as a criminal defense attorney. Legal Studies courses I have developed are Modern Political Trials, War Crimes Tribunals, the Death Penalty in America, Civil Liberties in Wartime, and Torture, Terrorism & Law. I also teach the Legal Studies junior year writing course and Introduction to Legal Studies. In one way or another, all of my courses require students to investigate the meaning of justice. After serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Liberia, West Africa, I earned a bachelor’s degree in 1973 and a J.D. in 1976. In 1976, I was a principal organizer of the first national Women in the Law Conference and a founding member of the Feminist Law Collective in Washington, D.C., where I represented tenant associations, non-profit businesses, juvenile defendants, and children in custody disputes. In 1981, I helped found the Resistance Law Office in New York. My clients included indigent defendants in state and federal court as well as community activists and political prisoners charged with federal racketeering charges. In 1988, I moved to Western Massachusetts to study U.S. political history and Latin American history in the Department of History at the University of Massachusetts. I received a Ph.D. in 1996. My dissertation, “The Politics of Anticommunism in Massachusetts, 1930-1960,” tells the story of anticommunism on the state and local level. It examines the ideas of anticommunists working behind the scenes in unions, schools, libraries, state and local government, and the Catholic Church. During the 1980s, I presented papers on my work as a defense attorney at Rutgers University, New York University School of Law, Queens College School of Law (CUNY), National Lawyers Guild, and Center for Popular Economics Summer Institute, as well as at international conferences in Havana, Cuba, and Frankfurt, Germany. Since then, I have presented papers on anticommunism at the New England Historical Association and the Social Science Historical Association and on International Criminal Law at the Law & Society Association. I have given talks on war crimes tribunals and the International Criminal Court for the Five College Peace and World Security Studies Program, Labor Studies forum, Hampshire College Law Program, and Women's Studies program. My primary focus for the Legal Studies major is on undergraduate teaching. In addition to my regular courses, I coordinate the Legal Studies internship program and lead a seminar for students participating in internships. I have received a PAWSS curriculum development grant and a grant to assist the department in developing community service learning and internship opportunities. Education: |
