Susan Brophy

Associate Professor

Department of Sociology and Legal Studies

PhD, York University

MA, Carleton University

BA, Carleton University

P: 519-884-8111 x 28284

E: susan.brophy@uwaterloo.ca

Office: SH 2009

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Biography

My interdisciplinary approach to teaching and research in Legal Studies draws on political theory, philosophy, history, and political economy.

Current research:

  • law, capitalism, and colonialism

Ongoing research:

  • uneven and combined development as dialectical materialist methodology
  • liberal democratic state law and authority
  • politico-legal subjectivity
  • continental philosophy (Kant, Marx, Agamben)
  • anticolonialist methodology and analysis (Fanon)
  • idealist vs. materialist approaches to law

Please visit my website for more information.

Publications

The content that follows may only represent a portion of the Faculty member’s work.

Books

Brophy, Susan Dianne. A Legacy of Exploitation: Early Capitalism in the Red River Colony, 1763-1821. UBC Press, 2022.

Chapters

Brophy, Susan Dianne. “Immanuel Kant”. In Agamben's Philosophical Lineage. Edinburgh University Press, 2017.

Articles

Brophy, Susan Dianne. "Law and Transitions to Capitalism." Social & Legal Studies 32, no. 4 (2023): 626-644.

Brophy, Susan Dianne. "The fur trade shows us that Canada has a long history of unethical business practices." The Conversation, 2022. https://theconversation.com/the-fur-trade-shows-us-that-canada-has-a-long-history-of-unethical-business-practices-193432

Brophy, Susan Dianne . “Reciprocity as Dispossession: A Dialectical Materialist Analysis of the Fur Trade”. Settler Colonial Studies 9, no. 3 (2019): 301-319.

Brophy, Susan Dianne and Blokhuis, J.C. “Defining Legal Studies in Canada”. Journal of Commonwealth Law and Legal Education 12, no. 1 (2017): 7-18.

Brophy, Susan Dianne. “An Uneven and Combined Development Theory of Law: Initiation”. Law and Critique 28, no. 2 (2017): 167-191.

Brophy, Susan Dianne. “The Emancipatory Praxis of Ukrainian Canadians (1891-1919) and the Necessity of a Situated Critique”. Labour/Le travail: Journal of Canadian Labour Studies 77, no. Spring (2016): 151-179.

Brophy, Susan Dianne. “Freedom without Being: Kant’s Corrective as the Philosophical Crux of Agamben’s ‘Homo Sacer’ Series”. European Journal of Political Theory (2016): Online First.

Brophy, Susan Dianne. “Agamben and the Political Act: Traces of a Regressive Logic”. Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory 22, no. 4 (2015): 555-570.

Brophy, Susan Dianne. “Meaningless Authenticity: The Ethical Subject in Agamben’s Early Works”. Critical Horizons: A Journal of Philosophy and Social Theory 16, no. 3 (2015): 246-263.

Brophy, Susan Dianne. “Freedom, Law, and the Colonial Project”. Law and Critique 24, no. 1 (2013): 39-61.

Courses taught

LS 101: Introduction to Legal Studies

LS 286: Law in Popular Culture

LS 386: Law and Violence

LS 401: Law, Culture, and Rights

LS 402: Legal Authority & Subjectivity

LS 431: Corporate Governance

ARTS 130: Inquiry and Communication [Topic: Law & Colonialism]

Professional, administrative and community service

The content that follows may only represent a portion of the Faculty member’s work.

Administrative

St. Jerome's University

Chair, Department of Sociology and Legal Studies (2020-2023)