Dean Spade

Dean Spade

Professor of Law

Email Dean

Curriculum Vitae

AREAS OF EXPERTISE

  • Poverty Law
  • Administrative Law
  • Critical Perspectives on Transgender Law

EDUCATION

  • Bachelor of Arts, Barnard College
  • Juris Doctor, UCLA Law School

Biography

Dean Spade is a Professor at Seattle University School of Law, where he teaches Administrative Law, Poverty Law, Gender and Law, Policing and Imprisonment, Professional Responsibility, and Law and Social Movements. Prior to joining the faculty of Seattle University, Dean was a Williams Institute Law Teaching Fellow at UCLA Law School and Harvard Law School.

Dean has been working to build queer and trans liberation based in racial and economic justice for the past two decades. Dean is the author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law (South End Press, 2011). A second edition with new writing was published in 2015 by Duke University Press. Bella Terra Press published a Spanish edition in 2016.

In 2015, Dean released a one-hour video documentary, Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!, which can be watched free online with English captions or subtitles in several languages.

Dean's latest book, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), was published by 2020 and is soon to be published in Italian, Spanish, Thai, Czech and German.

Dean's videos, articles, interviews, book chapters, and syllabi are available on his website.

Publications

Book

  • NORMAL LIFE: ADMINISTRATIVE VIOLENCE, CRITICAL TRANS POLITICS AND THE LIMITS OF LAW, (South End Press 2011). Second Edition (Duke University Press 2015), translated to Spanish and published as UNA VIDA “NORMAL”:VIOLENCIA ADMINISTRATIVA, POLÍTICAS TRANS CRÍTICAS, Y LOS LÍMITES DEL DERECHO, (Bellaterra Press 2016).
  • MUTUAL AID: BUILDING SOLIDARITY DURING THIS CRISIS (AND THE NEXT). (Verso Press, 2020); available in Italian, Catalan, Spanish, and Czech and is forthcoming from various publishers in Portuguese, Thai, German, Korean.

Articles

  • Reframing Faculty Criticisms of Student Activism, in The Chronicle of Higher Education, (2017).
  • Legal Equality, Gay Numbers and the (After?)Math of Eugenics, co-authored with Rori Rohlfs, in Navigating Neoliberalism in the Academy, Nonprofits, and Beyond, (2016). 
  • Sex, Gender and War in the Age of Multicultural Imperialism, co-authored with Craig Willse, in QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking, (2014).
  • Queer Politics and Anti-Blackness, co-authored with Morgan Bassichis, in Queer Necropolitics, edited by Jin Haritaworn, Adi Kuntsman and Silvia Posocco, (2014).
  • Too Queer to Be Square, in After Homosexual: The Legacies of Gay Liberation, edited by Carolyn D'Cruz and Mark Pendleton, (2014).
  • Intersectional Resistance and Law Reform, in Signs, (2013).
  • Under the Cover of Gay Rights, N.Y.U. Review of Law and Social Change, (2013).
  • Their Laws Will Never Make Us Safer, in Prisons Will Not Protect You (ed. Ryan Conrad) (AK Press 2012), Spanish translation by Morgan Ztardust.
  • Building an Abolitionist Trans & Queer Movement with Everything We've Got, in Captive Genders (ed. Eric Stanley and Nat Smith) (AK Press, 2011), (co-authored with Morgan Bassichis and Alex Lee) (Mandarin translation available here.).
  • The Only Way to End Racialized Gender Violence in Prisons is to End Prisons: A Response to Russell Robinson's Masculinity As Prison, The Circuit, December 18, 2012.
  • Notes Toward Racial and Gender Justice Ally Practice in Legal Academia, in Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for women in Academia (eds. Gabriella Gutierrez y Muhs, Angela P. Harris, Carmen Gonzalez and Yolanda Niemann) (Utah University Press, 2012).
  • Laws as Tactics, 21 Colum. J. Gender & L. 442 (2011).
  • Be Professional!, 33 Harv. J. L. & Gender 71 (2010). (This article is a response to Bob Chang and Adrienne Davis' article, "Making Up Is Hard to Do: Race/Gender/Sexual Orientation in the Law School Classroom," 33 Harv. J. L. & Gender 1 (2010)).
  • Documenting Gender: Incoherence and Rulemaking, 59 HASTINGS L. J. 731 (2008), awarded the 2008 Dukeminier Award and reprinted in UCLA Journal of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law [forthcoming].
  • Trans Law Reform Strategies, Co-Optation, and the Potential for Transformative Change, 30 WOMEN'S RIGHTS L. R. 288 (2009).
  • Trans Politics on a Neoliberal Landscape, 18 TEMP. POL. & CIV. RTS. L. REV. 353 (2009).
  • "Documenting Gender." 59 Hastings L.J. 731 (2008).
  • "The State We're In: Locations of Coercion and Resistance in Trans Policy, Part I." Sexuality, Research and Social Policy: Journal of NSRC, Vol. 4, Issue 4, pp. 1–6, Co-authored with Paisley Currah (2007).
  • "The State We're In: Locations of Coercion and Resistance in Trans Policy, Part II." Sexuality, Research and Social Policy: Journal of NSRC, Vol. 5, Issue 1, pp. 1–5, Co-authored with Paisley Currah (2007).
  • "The Nonprofit Industrial Complex and Trans Resistance." Sexuality, Research and Social Policy: Journal of NSRC, Vol. 5, Issue 1, pp. 53–71, Co-authored with Rickke Manazala.
  • "Methodology and Trans Resistance." (Forthcoming in A Companion to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies (Blackwell Companions in Cultural Studies), eds. McGarry and Haggerty.
  • "Compliance is Gendered: Transgender Survival and Social Welfare." Transgender Rights, eds. Paisley Currah, Shannon Minter, Richard Juang (2006).
  • "Mutilating Gender," in The Transgender Reader, eds. Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle (2006)
  • "For Lovers and Fighters." We Don't Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists, ed. Melody Berger (2006).
  • "Remarks at Georgetown Journal of Gender and Law Symposium." in Sex, Gender and Crime: The Politics of the State as Protector and Punisher: The Identity Victim, 7 Geo. J. Gender & L. (2006).
  • "Freedom in a Regulatory State?: Lawrence, Marriage and Biopolitics." Co-authored with Craig Willse. 11 Widener L. Rev. 309 (2005).
  • "Fighting to Win." in That's Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation, ed. Matt Bernstein Sycamore, (2004).
  • "Once More . . . with Feeling." Inside Out: FTM and Beyond, ed. Morty Diamond, (2004).
  • "My Memory and My Witness." Co-authored with Elisabeth Goldschmidt, in Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class, ed. Michelle Tea, (2004).
  • "Transecting the Academy." Co-authored with Sel Wahng. GLQ 10. 2, (2004).
  • "Resisting Medicine/Remodeling Gender." 18 Berkeley Women's Law Journal, (2003), excerpted in Sexuality, Gender, and the Law, 2004 Foundation Press, eds. William Eskridge and Nan Hunter.
  • "Dress to Kill, Fight to Win." LTTR 1. (2002).
  • "Undeserving Addicts: SSI/SSD and the Penalties of Poverty." 5 Howard Scroll: The Social Justice Law Review 89, (2002).
  • "Confronting the Limits of Gay Hate Crimes Activism: A Radical Critique." Co-authored with Craig Willse. Chicano-Latino Law Review, Volume 21, (2000).

Book Chapters

  • Building an Abolitionist Trans & Queer Movement with Everything We've Got, forthcoming in CAPTIVE GENDERS (ed. Eric Stanley and Nat Smith) (AK Press), (co-authored with Morgan Bassichis and Alex Lee).
  • Notes Toward Racial and Gender Justice Ally Practice in Legal Academia, forthcoming in PRESUMED INCOMPETENT (eds. Gabriella Gutierrez y Muhs, Angela P. Harris, Carmen Gonzalez and Yolanda Niemann) (2011).
  • "Street Smart." Images: A Journal of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, (2000), Volume 1.
  • "Outing Age: A Working Paper on Policy Issues Facing GLBT Old People." National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute, August 1998. Released as final report November 2000.
  • "SexPanic!–Make the Connections." Co-authored with Eva Pendleton. Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, Volume V, Number 3, (1998).

Activity

In the News