Yvonne Zylan

I am a sociologist and attorney who studies law and society, sexuality, social theory, political institutions, and the state and social policy. I am the author of States of Passion: Law, Identity, and the Social Construction of Desire (Oxford Univ. Press 2011). I am primarily interested in the ways in which law is constituted by, and constitutes, our lives and identities as social beings. I also conduct research on political institutions and social movements, examining the nature of resistance as it arises within state institutions, as well as efforts to target those institutions.

Some of my other publications include:

– (with Jaime Kucinskas) a study of civil servants' responses to the first Trump Administration (American Journal of Sociology, 128:6)

– an examination of anti-gay hate crime laws, "gay panic," and legal discourses of sex, sexuality, and the body (Michigan Journal of Gender and the Law, 16:1)

– a study of legal and political discourses of motherhood and miltary service (Southwestern Law Review, 42:4)

– (with Sarah Soule) a study of welfare state retrenchment in the United States (Social Forces, 79:2)

Along with holding teaching appointments in the United States and Canada, I have also practiced law – as a litigator in a large, multinational law firm and as a law clerk to the Honorable Briana H. Zamora of the New Mexico Supreme Court.