Carrie N. Baker

Carrie N. Baker is an American lawyer, the Sylvia Dlugasch Bauman Professor of American Studies, and Chair of the Program for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She teaches courses on gender, law, public policy and feminist activism, and is affiliated with the archives concentration, the journalism concentration and the public policy minor. She co-founded and is a former co-director of the certificate in Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice Program offered by the Five College Consortium. Fighting the US Youth Sex Trade (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Sexual Harassment Law (Carolina Academic Press, 2020), Public Feminisms: From Academy to Community, edited with Aviva Dove-Viebahn. (Lever Press, 2023), and Abortion Pills: US History and Politics (Amherst College Press, 2024). She has also written many scholarly articles on sexual harassment, sex trafficking, violence against women and reproductive rights.

Baker writes for Ms. Magazine and co-chairs the Ms. Committee of Scholars, which connects academic scholarship to feminist public writing. She has a monthly column in the Daily Hampshire Gazette and has a monthly radio show, Feminist Futures, on WHMP in Northampton, MA. She is a former president of the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts and is currently a board member of Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund of Massachusetts.

Education Baker received a B.A. in Philosophy from Yale University in 1987, a J.D. from Emory University School of Law in 1994, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from The Institute of Women's Studies at Emory University in 1994 and 2001 respectively. While in law school, she was editor-in-chief of the Emory Law Journal

For her teaching, Baker was awarded the 2006 Dave and Lu Garrett Award for Meritorious Teaching at Berry College, the 2018 Student Government Association Annual Teaching Award at Smith College, and the 2020 Sherrerd Teaching Award at Smith College.

Scholarly Articles