Fifty Mothers is a project on how Black American women living on the margins love, fear, hope, dream, ache, wonder, resist, grieve, claim their dignity, and remake their lives around the laws, policies, practices, and social situations that closely regulate them. To tell these mothers' stories and to advance theory about the relationship between race, gender, class, and law, the talk uses the tool of "empirical poetry"—a humanistic social science method that draws from data coded both thematically and poetically.

About Monica Bell: Dr. Monica C. Bell is Professor of Law & Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale University. Bell works at the intersection of law and sociology, using sociological tools to explore a wide variety of legal questions, mostly those focused on race and class inequality. Some subject matters that Bell has focused on include policing, structural and interpersonal violence, safety and security, welfare and public benefits, and housing and residential segregation. Bell uses multiple techniques for analysis, theory construction, and data presentation, with an emphasis on qualitative methodology.