As a professor of criminology at the University of Toronto Mariana Valverde has a long history of exploring legal questions tied to sexuality. The first book she published as an academic, in fact, was Sex, Power, And Pleasure in 1985. In the early 1990s, she published another book tracing the development of moral regulation in Canada in The Age of Light, Soap and Water: Moral Reform in English Canada, 1880s-1920s. Valverde has also done academic work on the subject of alcohol, addiction, health, morality and the legal system.
Tonight Valverde will be in town to give a lecture at the University of Regina. Her talk is titled “Beyond the Criminal Law: What Local & Provincial Authorities Can Do to Regulate Sexually-Oriented Business”. Right now, of course, the federal government is in the process of recriminalizing prostitution via Bill C-38 after the Supreme Court struck down aspects of the previous law last December because of the danger posed to sex trade workers. But as Valverde will doubtlessly demonstrate, criminal law isn’t the only tool available to provide a measure of control over the sex trade.
The lecture goes tonight at Luther Auditorium on the University of Regina campus at 5 p.m. For more information call 306-585-4226 or visit the university website.