Kathryn Heard

Kathryn (Katie) Heard is an interdisciplinary teacher-scholar of American political and legal life, with particular expertise in critical theory and constitutional jurisprudence. Her teaching and research focus on the administration of capital and carceral punishment, religious and ideological pluralism in late liberal states, race-conscious reparative practices, and feminist and queer theory.

Professor Heard’s research can be found in interdisciplinary journals like Law, Culture, and Humanities and in edited volumes. Her current research analyzes, respectively, the use of religious freedom claims in execution chambers, in matters of public accommodation, and in Indigenous efforts to redress the harms of settler colonialism. She also has a sustained interest in teaching and learning practices in higher education, an interest that was informed by her position co-directing a multi-year pedagogical innovation grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations on Dialogues Across Differences at Dickinson College.

In the classroom, Professor Heard endeavors to make complex theoretical and legal problems accessible through regular interventions into lived experience. From classes like Ordinary Law to Religious Freedom, students undertake archival research, participate in fieldtrips to historical sites and contemporary institutions, and engage with community partners. She also regularly includes students in her research, which recently took them to the early archives of Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney, author of Dred Scott v. Sandford.

Professor Heard holds a Ph.D. in Jurisprudence and Social Policy, with a designated emphasis in critical theory, from the University of California, Berkeley. She also holds an M.Sc. with distinction from the London School of Economics and a B.A. with honors from Whitman College.