April 28, 2016
April Petillo appointed to the Law and Society Association's diversity committee
April Petillo, faculty member in the American ethnic studies department, has been appointed to the diversity committee of the Law and Society Association. This standing committee is charged with implementing the association's policy on diversity, which focuses on systematic and sustained efforts to develop greater diversity in the association — around subjects discussed as well as membership. Valerie Hans, association president and professor at Cornell Law School, appointed Petillo with enthusiasm, noting both Petillo's scholarship and outspoken participation as a graduate student at association conferences.
Petillo's work within the committee will address scholarship on Federal Indian Law, feminist jurisprudence, race and ethnicity as well as and contemporary social justice. She is particularly committed to seeing an increase in a focus on topics of interest to and greater inclusion of young-in-career scholars of color and difference. Petillo's committee work begins in the 2016-2017 academic year.
The Law and Society Association is an international, interdisciplinary scholarly organization committed to social scientific, interpretive and historical analyses of law across multiple social contexts. These contexts include the diverse understandings and practices of people interacting within the law, the claims that people make for legal redress of injustices, and the coercive power exercised to enforce lawful order as well as evasions of law, resistance and defiance toward law, and alternatives to law in structuring social relations.