Inaugurating an annual speaker series to honor, extend, and enhance the legacy of Dr. Alice Bartee, the Department of Political Science welcomed UMKC Law Professor, Nancy Levit, on September 16th, 2014.
Professor Levit has been on the faculty of the Law School since 1988. She teaches Defamation & Privacy, Employment Discrimination, Gender & Justice, Jurisprudence, and Torts, and is the faculty advisor to the UMKC Law Review.In 2012, she received the Missouri Governor’s Award for Teaching Excellence. The University of Missouri awarded her a Curators’ Professorship in 2005. She is one of 26 law professors in the country who is profiled in the book by Dean Michael Hunter Schwartz et al., What the Best Law Teachers Do, recently published by Harvard University Press. Professor Levit’s scholarship is principally in the areas of legal pedagogy, constitutional law, jurisprudence, torts, and feminist legal theory. Her book with Doug Linder, The Happy Lawyer: Making a Good Life in the Law, was published by Oxford University Press in 2010. Their sequel, The Good Lawyer: Seeking Quality in the Practice of Law, was published by Oxford this year. She has also written books about feminist legal theory, Feminist Legal Theory: A Primer (NYU Press 2006) (co-authored with Rob Verchick), jurisprudence, Jurisprudence—Classical and Contemporary: From Natural Law to Postmodernism (West Group 2002) (co-authored with Robert L. Hayman, Jr., and Richard Delgado), and sex segregation, feminism, and masculinity, The Gender Line: Men, Women, and the Law (NYU Press 1998). She was the editor of the Kansas Criminal Defense Manual and is presently the editorial associate of the Journal of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. Her articles have appeared in the California Law Review, the Fordham Law Review, the George Washington University Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, the Hofstra Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, the Ohio State Law Journal, the UCLA Law Review, the University of Colorado Law Review, and the Wisconsin Law Review, among other places.
Although Professor Levit and Alice never met, it is clear that they are kindred spirits. Moreover, Nancy is to her students, what Alice was to hers. To find out more about our efforts to honor Alice, information can be found at http://politicalscience.missouristate.edu/alicebarteeendowment.htm
MSU political science major, UMKC Law alumni, and member of the MSU Board of Governors, Stephen Bough, introduces our speaker, Professor Nancy Levit, from UMKC Law School.
Professor Levit presents her research on happiness in the legal profession with a focus on what happy lawyers need in their “toolbox” – Mattering, Control, Downward Comparison, Relationships, Commitment, and Flow.
Special guests included Dr. Wayne Bartee, MSU political science major, UMKC Law alumni, and member of the MSU Board of Governors, Kendall Seal, MSU President Clif Smart, his wife Gail, and Stephen Bough. Members of the Bartee family as well as many former students, colleagues, and friends were in attendance.