Biography
Jo Ann Citron received her undergraduate degree from Vassar College and her Ph.D. in English from Boston University. She was Assistant Professor of English at Bates College
where she specialized in 19th century British fiction, especially
how women and marriage were represented in novels. She left
Bates to attend law school and received her J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law in 1992.
She is admitted to practice in Massachusetts and in New York.
Citron has consulted for the Northeastern University Domestic Violence Institute where, as Technology Director under a grant from the Soros Foundation, she developed strategies for involving the private bar in the delivery of public interest legal services. From 2000-2002, she was a Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for Research on Women at Wellesley College where she studied how same-sex couples break up without having access to divorce laws.
From 2002 to 2007 she was Visiting Assistant Professor of Women's
Studies at Wellesley College where she taught an advanced seminar in
the law and public policy of family formation and dissolution.
For several years, Citron served on the board of the Women’s Bar Association (WBA) and was instrumental in developing its Family Law Project for Battered Women, which provides pro bono and low-cost legal services for families victimized by domestic violence. As a member and vice-president of the board of the Women’s Bar Foundation (WBF), she established the organization’s annual fundraising event to support the many pro bono projects that the WBA and WBF administer.
She has served on the board of the Massachusetts Lesbian and Gay Bar Association (MLGBA) and
has chaired its Family Law Section. Citron served as a
member of the board of the American Civil Liberties Union of
Massachusetts from 1999 to 2008, and as its vice president from
2002-2004. She is a member of the American Bar Association (ABA), the Massachusetts Bar Association (MBA), the Boston Bar Association (BBA), the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC), the Massachusetts Association of Guardians ad Litem (MAGAL), and the Modern Language Association (MLA).
Jo Ann Citron has published numerous articles on both literature and law and is currently expanding her research into a book, “The Gay Divorcée: How Same-Sex Couples Break Up.”