Serena Mayeri

Serena Mayeri’s scholarship focuses on the historical impact of progressive and conservative social movements on legal and constitutional change.

Her book, Reasoning from Race: Feminism, Law, and the Civil Rights Revolution (Harvard University Press, 2011) received the Littleton-Griswold Prize from the American Historical Association and the Darlene Clark Hine Award from the Organization of American Historians.

Mayeri’s current book project, tentatively titled The Status of Marriage: Marital Supremacy Challenged and Remade, 1960-2000, examines the history of challenges to marriage’s primacy as a legal institution and a source of public and private benefits. Related articles have recently appeared in the California Law Review and the Yale Law Journal. Mayeri teaches courses in family law, employment discrimination, gender and the law, and legal history.

She holds a secondary appointment in the Department of History, and is a Core Faculty member in the Program on Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. In 2016, Mayeri was named a Distinguished Lecturer by the Organization of American Historians. In 2019, she received the Robert A. Gorman Award for Excellence in Teaching.