Carrie N. Baker is an American lawyer, the Sylvia Dlugasch Bauman Professor of American Studies, and professor in 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 women's movements, and is affiliated with the Archives Concentration Program. 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.
Baker has published five books: The Women's Movement Against Sexual Harassment (Cambridge University Press, 2007) (winner of the Sara A. Whaley Book Prize), Fighting the US Youth Sex Trade (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Sexual Harassment Law (Carolina Academic Press, 2020) with Jennifer Drobac and Rigel Oliveri, 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) (winner of the 2026 ACLS Open Access Book Prize in History). She has also written many scholarly articles on sexual harassment, sex trafficking, violence against women and reproductive rights.
Baker is a contributing editor and regular writer 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 also a Thursday co-host of Talk the Talk on WHMP. She is a former president of the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts, formerly on the board member of Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund of Massachusetts and a founder of the Abortion Truth Campaign, which advocates for transparency and accountability for antiabortion crisis pregnancy centers.
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 Emory University in 1994 and 2001 respectively. While in law school, she was editor-in-chief of the Emory Law Journal and, from 1994 to 1996, she served as a law clerk to United States District Court Judge Marvin Herman Shoob in Atlanta, Georgia.
Teaching Before teaching at Smith College, Baker taught at the Berry College in the department of Sociology and Anthropology, where she chaired the Women's Studies Program, directed the Interdisciplinary Studies Program and was the co-directed the Southern Women Writers Conference in 2003. She served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Emory University from 2001-2001.
Awards Her first book, The Women's Movement Against Sexual Harassment, won the 2008 National Women's Studies Association Sara A. Whaley book prize. Her fifth book, Abortion Pills: US History and Politics, won the 2026 ACLS Open Access Book Prize in History.
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. She was named the Sylvia Dlugasch Bauman Professor of American Studies in 2021.
Scholarly Articles +Published Scholarly ArticlesYearJournalTitle2023Journal of Health Politics, Law and Policy | Duke University PressHistory and Politics of Medication Abortion and the Rise of Telemedicine and Self-Managed Abortion2021ContraceptionAccess to Medication Abortion Among Massachusetts’ Public University Students2021Penn Program on RegulationSupreme Court Reinstates Barriers to Abortion by Telemedicine2020ADVANCE Journal | National Science FoundationAmplification of Structural Inequalities: Research Sabbaticals During COVID-192020Feminist Formations | Johns Hopkins University PressAmplifying Our Voices: Feminist Scholars Writing for the Public2018Feminist Formations | Johns Hopkins University PressTeaching to Empower2018Politics & Gender | Cambridge University PressRacialized Rescue Narratives in Public Discourses on Youth Prostitution and Sex Trafficking in the United States2017Violence Against Women | SAGE JournalsChallenging Narratives of the Anti-Rape Movement’s Decline2016Journal of Women, Politics & Policy | Taylor & Francis OnlineObscuring Gender-Based Violence: Marriage Promotion and Teen Dating Violence Research2015Journal of Human TraffickingAn Examination of Some Central Debates on Sex Trafficking in Research and Public Policy in the United States2014Meridians | Duke University PressAn Intersectional Analysis of Sex Trafficking Films2013Journal of Feminist Scholarship | University of Rhode IslandMoving Beyond “Slaves, Sinners, and Saviors”: An Intersectional Feminist Analysis of US SexTrafficking Discourses, Law and Policy2008Journal of Women, Politics & Policy | Taylor & Francis OnlinePay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain! Power, Privacy, and the Legal Regulation of Violence Against Women2007Journal of Women's History | Johns Hopkins University PressThe Emergence of Organized Feminist Resistance to Sexual Harassment in the United States in the 1970s2005NWSA Journal | Johns Hopkins University Press"An Orchid in the Arctic": Women's Studies in the Rural South2004Feminist StudiesRace, Class, and Sexual Harassment in the 1970s
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