Shows
The Legal History PodcastEPISODE 32: Kate MasurIn this episode Siobhan talks with Kate Masur, Professor of History and Board of Visitors Professor at Northwestern University about her book, Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction (W. W. Norton, 2021). Until Justice Be Done was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History and winner of the Littleton-Griswold Prize from the American Historical Association, the John Phillip Reid Book Award from the American Society for Legal History, and the John Nau Book Prize in American Civil War Era History.
Masur teaches undergraduate courses on the Civil War and...
2023-06-1351 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 31: Felicity TurnerIn this episode Siobhan talks with Felicity Turner, Associate Professor of History and Honors Program Coordinator at Georgia Southern University about her book “Proving Pregnancy: Gender, Law, and Medical Knowledge in the Nineteenth-Century United States” (UNC Press, 2022).
Her teaching and research interests include legal history; history of medicine; women, gender, and sexuality; law and society; and nineteenth-century US history. She is the author of “The Contradictions of Reform: Prosecuting Infant Murder in the Nineteenth-Century U.S.” published in Law and History Review in May 2021 and “Rights and the Ambiguities of the Law: Infanticide in the Nineteenth-Century U.S. South” p...
2023-01-0327 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 30: Peter Grajzl & Peter MurrellIn this episode Siobhan talks with Professors Peter Grajzl and Peter Murrell about their June 2022 Law and History Review article “Using Topic-Modeling in Legal History, with an Application to Pre-Industrial English Case Law on Finance.”
Peter Grajzl is Professor of Economics at Washington & Lee University, where he teaches courses in introductory economics, microeconomic theory, comparative institutional economics, and mathematical methods. He has published on a range of topics pertaining to the emergence, the functioning, and the impact of different legal, political, and economic institutions and modes of governance, as well as cultural norms and ideas, in multiple part...
2022-11-2645 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 29: Jonathan GienappJonathan Gienapp is an assistant professor in Stanford’s Department of History. He is a scholar of Revolutionary and early republican America specializing in the period’s constitutionalism, political culture, legal history, and intellectual history. He is also interested in the method and practice of the history of ideas. His first book, The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era (Harvard University Press, Belknap, 2018), rethinks the conventional story of American constitutional creation by exploring how and why founding-era Americans’ understanding of their Constitution transformed in the earliest years of the document’s existence. It investigates how early pol...
2022-06-1335 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 28: Warren Milteer, Jr.In this episode, Siobhan talks with Warren Eugene Milteer, Jr. about his book North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715-1885 (LSU Press, 2020). Milteer is an assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His other publications include Beyond Slavery’s Shadow: Free People of Color in the South (UNC Press, 2021), the independently published Hertford County, North Carolina’s Free People of Color and Their Descendants (2016), as well as articles in the Journal of Social History and the North Carolina Historical Review. Milteer was the recipient of the Historical Society of North Carolina’s R. D. W. Connor A...
2021-12-2938 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 27: Samantha BarbasIn this episode, Siobhan talks with Samantha Barbas about her book The Rise and Fall of Morris Ernst: Free Speech Renegade (UCP, 2021). Barbas is Professor of Law at the University at Buffalo School of Law. She researches and teaches in the areas of legal history, First Amendment law, and mass communications law. Her work focuses on the intersection of law, culture, media and technology in United States history. Her recent research has explored the history of censorship, privacy and defamation.
In the 1930s and ’40s, Morris Ernst was one of America’s best-known liberal lawyers. The ACLU’s gener...
2021-11-1044 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 26: Samuel Fury Childs DalyIn this episode, Siobhan talks with Samuel Fury Childs Daly about his J. Willard Hurst Prize winning book A History of the Republic of Biafra: Law, Crime, and the Nigerian Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Daly is Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies and History at Duke University. He is a historian of twentieth century Africa whose research combines legal, military, and social history to describe Africa's history since independence.
The Republic of Biafra lasted for less than three years, but the war over its secession would contort Nigeria for decades to come. Samuel Fury Chi...
2021-07-2826 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 25: Nurfadzilah YahayaIn this episode, Siobhan talks with Nurfadzilah Yahaya about her book Fluid Jurisdictions: Colonial Law and Arabs in Southeast Asia (Cornell University Press, 2020). She is Assistant Professor of History at the National University of Singapore where she specializes in the history of the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia, Islamic law, and mobilities. Her second book project will be on the history of land reclamation in the British Empire.
This wide-ranging, geographically ambitious book tells the story of the Arab diaspora within the context of British and Dutch colonialism, unpacking the community's ambiguous embrace of European colonial authority in Sou...
2021-05-2452 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 24: Joseph DavidIn this episode, Siobhan talks with Joseph E. David about his book Kinship, Law and Politics: An Anatomy of Belonging (CUP, 2020). David is a Visiting Professor (Adjunct) of Law at Yale Law School and a Visiting Professor at the Program in Judaic Studies at Yale University. He is an Associate Professor of Law at Sapir Academic College in Israel. His research focuses on Law and Religion, Legal History, Comparative Law, and Jurisprudence.
Why are we so concerned with belonging? In what ways does our belonging constitute our identity? Is belonging a universal concept or a culturally dependent...
2021-02-0518 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 23: Charles ZeldenIn this episode, Siobhan talks with Charles L. Zelden about the new expanded edition of his book, “Bush v. Gore: Exposing the Growing Crisis in American Democracy” (University Press of Kansas, 2020). Zelden is a professor in the Department of History and Political Science at Nova Southeastern University's Halmos College of Arts and Sciences, where he teaches courses in history, government and legal studies.
In this third expanded edition Zelden offers a powerful history of voting rights and elections in America since 2000. Bush v. Gore exposes the growing crisis by detailing the numerous ways in which the unlearned and w...
2020-09-2953 min
New Books in Policing, Incarceration, and ReformPhilip Thai, "China's War on Smuggling: Law, Illicit Markets, and State Power on the China Coast" (Columbia UP, 2018)In this episode, Siobhan talks with Philip Thai about his book, China's War on Smuggling: Law, Illicit Markets, and State Power on the China Coast (Columbia University Press, 2018). Thai is Assistant Professor of History at Northeastern University. He is a historian of Modern China with research and teaching interests that include legal history, economic history, and diplomatic history.Smuggling along the Chinese coast has been a thorn in the side of many regimes. From opium and weapons concealed aboard foreign steamships in the Qing dynasty to nylon stockings and wristwatches trafficked in the People’s Republic, contests bet...
2020-08-2419 min
Off the Page: A Columbia University Press PodcastPhilip Thai, "China's War on Smuggling: Law, Illicit Markets, and State Power on the China Coast" (Columbia UP, 2018)In this episode, Siobhan talks with Philip Thai about his book, China's War on Smuggling: Law, Illicit Markets, and State Power on the China Coast (Columbia University Press, 2018). Thai is Assistant Professor of History at Northeastern University. He is a historian of Modern China with research and teaching interests that include legal history, economic history, and diplomatic history.Smuggling along the Chinese coast has been a thorn in the side of many regimes. From opium and weapons concealed aboard foreign steamships in the Qing dynasty to nylon stockings and wristwatches trafficked in the People’s Republic, contests bet...
2020-08-2419 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 22: Philip ThaiIn this episode, Siobhan talks with Philip Thai about his book, “The War on Smuggling: Law, Illicit Markets, and State Power on the China Coast” (Columbia University Press, 2018). Thai is Assistant Professor of History at Northeastern University. He is a historian of Modern China with research and teaching interests that include legal history, economic history, and diplomatic history.
Smuggling along the Chinese coast has been a thorn in the side of many regimes. From opium and weapons concealed aboard foreign steamships in the Qing dynasty to nylon stockings and wristwatches trafficked in the People’s Republic, contests betwee...
2020-08-1217 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 21: Ariela Gross and Alejandro de la FuenteIn this episode, Siobhan talks with Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela Gross about their book, “Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana” (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
How did Africans become 'blacks' in the Americas? Becoming Free, Becoming Black tells the story of enslaved and free people of color who used the law to claim freedom and citizenship for themselves and their loved ones. Their communities challenged slaveholders' efforts to make blackness synonymous with slavery. Looking closely at three slave societies - Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana - Alejandro de la Fuente and Arie...
2020-07-2944 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 20: Paul FinkelmanIn this episode, Lesa Redmond talks with Paul Finkelman about his book "Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South (Second Edition)" (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2020). Finkelman is an American Legal Historian and President of Gratz College.
Guest host Lesa Redmond is a first year student in the Department of History at Duke University. Her research focuses on colleges and universities and their connections to slavery.
2020-07-1743 min
New Books in Human RightsRobert T. Chase, "We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners’ Rights in Postwar America" (UNC Press, 2020)In this episode, Siobhan talks with Robert T. Chase about his book, We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners’ Rights in Postwar America (UNC Press, 2020).In the early twentieth century, the brutality of southern prisons became a national scandal. Prisoners toiled in grueling, violent conditions while housed in crude dormitories on what were effectively slave plantations. This system persisted until the 1940s when, led by Texas, southern states adopted northern prison design reforms. Texas presented the reforms to the public as modern, efficient, and disciplined. Inside prisons, however, the transition to penitentiary cells only mad...
2020-06-241h 04
UNC Press Presents PodcastRobert T. Chase, "We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners’ Rights in Postwar America" (UNC Press, 2020)In this episode, Siobhan talks with Robert T. Chase about his book, We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners’ Rights in Postwar America (UNC Press, 2020).In the early twentieth century, the brutality of southern prisons became a national scandal. Prisoners toiled in grueling, violent conditions while housed in crude dormitories on what were effectively slave plantations. This system persisted until the 1940s when, led by Texas, southern states adopted northern prison design reforms. Texas presented the reforms to the public as modern, efficient, and disciplined. Inside prisons, however, the transition to penitentiary cells only mad...
2020-06-241h 04New Books in Policing, Incarceration, and ReformRobert T. Chase, "We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners’ Rights in Postwar America" (UNC Press, 2020)In this episode, Siobhan talks with Robert T. Chase about his book, We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners’ Rights in Postwar America (UNC Press, 2020).In the early twentieth century, the brutality of southern prisons became a national scandal. Prisoners toiled in grueling, violent conditions while housed in crude dormitories on what were effectively slave plantations. This system persisted until the 1940s when, led by Texas, southern states adopted northern prison design reforms. Texas presented the reforms to the public as modern, efficient, and disciplined. Inside prisons, however, the transition to penitentiary cells only mad...
2020-06-241h 04
New Books in Latino StudiesRobert T. Chase, "We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners’ Rights in Postwar America" (UNC Press, 2020)In this episode, Siobhan talks with Robert T. Chase about his book, We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners’ Rights in Postwar America (UNC Press, 2020).In the early twentieth century, the brutality of southern prisons became a national scandal. Prisoners toiled in grueling, violent conditions while housed in crude dormitories on what were effectively slave plantations. This system persisted until the 1940s when, led by Texas, southern states adopted northern prison design reforms. Texas presented the reforms to the public as modern, efficient, and disciplined. Inside prisons, however, the transition to penitentiary cells only mad...
2020-06-241h 04The Legal History PodcastEPISODE 19: Robert ChaseIn this episode, Siobhan talks with Robert Chase about his book, We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners’ Rights in Postwar America (UNC Press, 2020).
Chase is Associate Professor of History at Stony Brook University. His areas of research and teaching include state and racial politics, African American and Latino/a history, urban history, labor history and working-class culture, critical race theory, political and sexual violence, social movements, and civil rights.
In We Are Not Slaves Chase draws from three decades of legal documents compiled by prisoners to narrate the struggle to change pri...
2020-06-041h 04UNC Press Presents PodcastMaddalena Marinari, "Unwanted: Italian and Jewish Mobilization against Restrictive Immigration Laws, 1882–1965" (UNC Press, 2020)In the late nineteenth century, Italians and Eastern European Jews joined millions of migrants around the globe who left their countries to take advantage of the demand for unskilled labor in rapidly industrializing nations, including the United States. Many Americans of northern and western European ancestry regarded these newcomers as biologically and culturally inferior--unassimilable--and by 1924, the United States had instituted national origins quotas to curtail immigration from southern and eastern Europe.In her new book Unwanted: Italian and Jewish Mobilization against Restrictive Immigration Laws, 1882–1965 (UNC Press, 2020), Maddalena Marinari examines how, from 1882 to 1965, Italian and Jewish reformers profoundly infl...
2020-04-1437 min
New Books in Italian StudiesMaddalena Marinari, "Unwanted: Italian and Jewish Mobilization against Restrictive Immigration Laws, 1882–1965" (UNC Press, 2020)In the late nineteenth century, Italians and Eastern European Jews joined millions of migrants around the globe who left their countries to take advantage of the demand for unskilled labor in rapidly industrializing nations, including the United States. Many Americans of northern and western European ancestry regarded these newcomers as biologically and culturally inferior--unassimilable--and by 1924, the United States had instituted national origins quotas to curtail immigration from southern and eastern Europe.In her new book Unwanted: Italian and Jewish Mobilization against Restrictive Immigration Laws, 1882–1965 (UNC Press, 2020), Maddalena Marinari examines how, from 1882 to 1965, Italian and Jewish reformers profoundly infl...
2020-04-1437 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 18: Maddalena MarinariIn this episode, Siobhan talks with Maddalena Marinari about her book, Unwanted Italian and Jewish Mobilization against Restrictive Immigration Laws, 1882–1965 (UNC Press, 2020)
Maddalena Marinari is Assistant Professor in History; Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies; and Peace Studies at Gustavus Adolphus College. She has published extensively on immigration restriction and immigrant mobilization.
In Unwanted Marinari examines how, from 1882 to 1965, Italian and Jewish reformers profoundly influenced the country’s immigration policy as they mobilized against the immigration laws that marked them as undesirable. Strategic alliances among restrictionist legislators in Congress, a climate of anti-immigrant hysteria, and a fickle exe...
2020-03-1834 minUNC Press Presents PodcastSophie White, "Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana" (UNC Press, 2019)In eighteenth-century New Orleans, the legal testimony of some 150 enslaved women and men--like the testimony of free colonists--was meticulously recorded and preserved. Questioned in criminal trials as defendants, victims, and witnesses about attacks, murders, robberies, and escapes, they answered with stories about themselves, stories that rebutted the premise on which slavery was founded.Focusing on four especially dramatic court cases, Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana (UNC Press, 2019) draws us into Louisiana’s courtrooms, prisons, courtyards, plantations, bayous, and convents to understand how the enslaved viewed and experienced their worlds. As they test...
2020-03-1243 min
New Books in French StudiesSophie White, "Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana" (UNC Press, 2019)In eighteenth-century New Orleans, the legal testimony of some 150 enslaved women and men--like the testimony of free colonists--was meticulously recorded and preserved. Questioned in criminal trials as defendants, victims, and witnesses about attacks, murders, robberies, and escapes, they answered with stories about themselves, stories that rebutted the premise on which slavery was founded.Focusing on four especially dramatic court cases, Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana (UNC Press, 2019) draws us into Louisiana’s courtrooms, prisons, courtyards, plantations, bayous, and convents to understand how the enslaved viewed and experienced their worlds. As they test...
2020-03-1243 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 17: Sophie WhiteIn this episode, Siobhan talks with Sophie White about her book, Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana. (UNC Press, 2019)
Sophie White is Associate Professor of American Studies and Concurrent Associate Professor in the Departments of Africana Studies, History, and Gender Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She is an historian of early America with an interdisciplinary focus on cultural encounters between Europeans, Africans and Native Americans, and a commitment to Atlantic and global research perspectives.
In eighteenth-century New Orleans, the legal testimony of some 150 enslaved women and men--like the tes...
2020-02-2540 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 16: Gregory DownsIn this episode, Siobhan talks with Gregory P. Downs about his book The Second American Revolution: The Civil War-Era Struggle over Cuba and the Rebirth of the American Republic (University of North Carolina Press, 2019). Downs is professor of history at the University of California, Davis where he studies the political and cultural history of the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
This episode is part of a series featuring legal history works from UNC Press. Support for the production of this series was provided by the Versatile Humanists at Duke program.
2020-01-2052 minUNC Press Presents PodcastJane H. Hong, "Gates to Asia: A Transpacific History of How America Repealed Asian Exclusion" (UNC Press, 2019)Over the course of less than a century, the U.S. transformed from a nation that excluded Asians from immigration and citizenship to one that receives more immigrants from Asia than from anywhere else in the world. Yet questions of how that dramatic shift took place have long gone unanswered. In Gates to Asia: A Transpacific History of How America Repealed Asian Exclusion (University of North Carolina Press, 2019), Jane H. Hong unearths the transpacific movement that successfully ended restrictions on Asian immigration.The mid-twentieth century repeal of Asian exclusion, Hong shows, was part of the price of...
2020-01-1745 min
New Books in Asian American StudiesJane H. Hong, "Gates to Asia: A Transpacific History of How America Repealed Asian Exclusion" (UNC Press, 2019)Over the course of less than a century, the U.S. transformed from a nation that excluded Asians from immigration and citizenship to one that receives more immigrants from Asia than from anywhere else in the world. Yet questions of how that dramatic shift took place have long gone unanswered. In Gates to Asia: A Transpacific History of How America Repealed Asian Exclusion (University of North Carolina Press, 2019), Jane H. Hong unearths the transpacific movement that successfully ended restrictions on Asian immigration.The mid-twentieth century repeal of Asian exclusion, Hong shows, was part of the price of...
2020-01-1745 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 15: Jane HongIn this episode, Siobhan talks with Jane Hong about her book Opening the Gates to Asia: A Transpacific History of How America Repealed Asian Exclusion (University of North Carolina Press, 2019). Hong is an assistant professor of history at Occidental College where she specializes in 20th-century U.S. immigration and engagement with the world, with a focus on Asia.
This episode is part of a series featuring legal history works from UNC Press. Support for the production of this series was provided by the Versatile Humanists at Duke program.
2019-12-0345 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 14: Kimberly WelchIn this episode, Siobhan talks with Kimberly M. Welch about her book Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South (University of North Carolina Press, 2018). Kimberly Welch is Assistant Professor of History and Assistant Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University. She is a scholar of race, slavery, and law in the early American South.
Black Litigants has won numerous awards, including the 2018 James H. Broussard Best First Book Prize, the 2019 J. Willard Hurst Prize, the 2018 David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Legal History, and the 2019 Vanderbilt University Chancellor's Award for Research.
This episode is part of a...
2019-11-1527 minUNC Press Presents PodcastWilliam P. Hustwit, "Integration Now: Alexander v. Holmes and the End of Jim Crow Education" (UNC Press, 2019)In this episode of Talking Legal History, Siobhan talks with William P. Hustwit about his book Integration Now: Alexander v. Holmes and the End of Jim Crow Education (UNC Press, 2019). Hustwit is the Associate Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Birmingham-Southern College. Fifty years after the Supreme Court decision, Integration Now explores how studying the case Alexander v. Holmes (1969) enhances understandings of the history underlying school desegregation. This episode is part of a series featuring legal history works from UNC Press.Recovering the history of an often-ignored landmark Supreme Court case, William P. Hu...
2019-11-1245 min
New Books in EducationWilliam P. Hustwit, "Integration Now: Alexander v. Holmes and the End of Jim Crow Education" (UNC Press, 2019)In this episode of Talking Legal History, Siobhan talks with William P. Hustwit about his book Integration Now: Alexander v. Holmes and the End of Jim Crow Education (UNC Press, 2019). Hustwit is the Associate Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Birmingham-Southern College. Fifty years after the Supreme Court decision, Integration Now explores how studying the case Alexander v. Holmes (1969) enhances understandings of the history underlying school desegregation. This episode is part of a series featuring legal history works from UNC Press.Recovering the history of an often-ignored landmark Supreme Court case, William P. Hu...
2019-11-1245 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 13: William HustwitIn this episode, Siobhan talks with William P. Hustwit about his book Integration Now: Alexander v. Holmes and the End of Jim Crow Education (UNC Press, 2019). Hustwit is the Associate Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Birmingham-Southern College. Fifty years after the Supreme Court decision in Alexander v. Holmes (1969), Integration Now explores how studying Alexander enhances understandings of the history underlying school desegregation.
This episode is part of a series featuring legal history works from UNC Press. Support for the production of this series was provided by the Versatile Humanists at Duke program.
2019-10-2842 minNew Books in EducationCandy Gunther Brown, "Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion?" (UNC Press, 2019)In this episode of New Books in Law Siobhan talks with Candy Gunther Brown about her book Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion? (UNC Press, 2019). Dr. Brown is a professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. She is a historian and ethnographer of religion and culture.Yoga and mindfulness activities, with roots in Asian traditions such as Hinduism or Buddhism, have been brought into growing numbers of public schools since the 1970s. While they are commonly assumed to be secular educational tools, Candy Gunther Brown asks...
2019-09-2633 min
New Books in Spiritual Practice and MindfulnessCandy Gunther Brown, "Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion?" (UNC Press, 2019)In this episode of New Books in Law Siobhan talks with Candy Gunther Brown about her book Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion? (UNC Press, 2019). Dr. Brown is a professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. She is a historian and ethnographer of religion and culture.Yoga and mindfulness activities, with roots in Asian traditions such as Hinduism or Buddhism, have been brought into growing numbers of public schools since the 1970s. While they are commonly assumed to be secular educational tools, Candy Gunther Brown asks...
2019-09-2630 min
New Books in SecularismCandy Gunther Brown, "Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion?" (UNC Press, 2019)In this episode of New Books in Law Siobhan talks with Candy Gunther Brown about her book Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion? (UNC Press, 2019). Dr. Brown is a professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. She is a historian and ethnographer of religion and culture.Yoga and mindfulness activities, with roots in Asian traditions such as Hinduism or Buddhism, have been brought into growing numbers of public schools since the 1970s. While they are commonly assumed to be secular educational tools, Candy Gunther Brown asks...
2019-09-2630 minUNC Press Presents PodcastCandy Gunther Brown, "Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion?" (UNC Press, 2019)In this episode of New Books in Law Siobhan talks with Candy Gunther Brown about her book Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion? (UNC Press, 2019). Dr. Brown is a professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. She is a historian and ethnographer of religion and culture.Yoga and mindfulness activities, with roots in Asian traditions such as Hinduism or Buddhism, have been brought into growing numbers of public schools since the 1970s. While they are commonly assumed to be secular educational tools, Candy Gunther Brown asks...
2019-09-2630 minUNC Press Presents PodcastHendrik Hartog, "The Trouble with Minna: A Case of Slavery and Emancipation in the Antebellum North" (UNC Press, 2018)In this episode of the American Society for Legal History’s podcast Talking Legal History Siobhan talks with Hendrik Hartog about his book The Trouble with Minna: A Case of Slavery and Emancipation in the Antebellum North (UNC Press, 2018). The Trouble with Minna is also used as a vessel to explore some of the topics discussed in Law and Social Inquiry's May 2019 “Review Symposium: Retrospective on the Work of Hendrik Hartog.” Hartog is the Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty, Emeritus at Princeton University. This episode is the first in a series featuring legal...
2019-09-0526 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 12: Hendrik HartogIn this podcast, Siobhan talks with Hendrik Hartog about his book The Trouble with Minna: A Case of Slavery and Emancipation in the Antebellum North (UNC Press, 2018). The Trouble with Minna is also used as a vessel to explore some of the topics discussed in Law and Social Inquiry's May 2019 “Review Symposium: Retrospective on the Work of Hendrik Hartog.” Hartog is the Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty, Emeritus at Princeton University.
This episode is the first in a series featuring legal history works from UNC Press. Support for the production of thi...
2019-08-0723 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 11: Paul FinkelmanIn this podcast, Siobhan talks with Paul Finkelman, President of Gratz College, about his book Supreme Injustice: Slavery in the Nation’s Highest Court (HUP, 2018). Finkelman is a specialist on the history of slavery and the law. He is also the author of more than 200 scholarly articles and the author or editor of more than fifty books on a broad range of topics including American Jewish history, American legal history, constitutional law, and legal issues surrounding baseball.
2019-07-1641 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 10: Martha JonesIn this podcast, Siobhan talks with Martha S. Jones, Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, about her book Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (CUP, 2018). Professor Jones is a legal and cultural historian whose interests include the study of race, law, citizenship, slavery, and the rights of women. Birthright Citizens explores how African Americans in antebellum Baltimore constituted their right to citizenship in legal venues.
2019-05-251h 07The Legal History PodcastEPISODE 9: Holly BrewerIn this podcast, Siobhan talks with Holly Brewer, Burke Chair of American History and Associate Professor at the University of Maryland, about her October 2017 article in the American Historical Review, “Slavery, Sovereignty and ‘Inheritable Blood’: Reconsidering John Locke and the Origins of American Slavery.” She is a specialist in early American history and the early British Empire. The article is part of a larger book project that will situate the origins of American slavery in the ideas and legal practices associated with the divine rights of kings, tentatively entitled “Inheritable Blood: Slavery & Sovereignty in Early America and the British Empire.”
2019-05-2551 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 8: Fahad Ahmad BisharaIn this episode, Siobhan talks with Fahad Ahmad Bishara, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia, about his book A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1950. He specializes in the economic and legal history of the Indian Ocean and Islamic world. Bishara discusses his sophisticated work that explores the intricate legal and economic regimes that traversed the Western Indian Ocean for generations. He also talks about how he effectively mined legal documents to craft this narrative.
2019-05-2549 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 7: Daniel SharfsteinIn this episode, Siobhan interviews Daniel J. Sharfstein, professor of law and history and co-director of the George Barrett Social Justice Program at Vanderbilt University, about his book Thunder in the Mountains: Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard and the Nez Perce War. Sharfstein’s scholarship focuses on the legal history of race in the United States. In this discussion, he explores ideas of law, society, and politics through his compelling narrative about the Nez Perce War.
2019-05-251h 18The Legal History PodcastEPISODE 6: Eric FonerIn this episode, Siobhan discusses law in the Reconstruction era with Eric Foner, the Dewitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. Foner, the author of seminal work Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, has dedicated much of the last year to public outreach about Reconstruction to mark its 150th anniversary.
2019-05-2531 minThe Legal History PodcastEPISODE 5: William DomnarskiIn this episode, Siobhan interviews attorney and author William Domnarski about his new biography of Richard Posner, an influential judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and great force behind the law and economics movement. Domnarski candidly sets forth the factors which underlie an individual who is arguably the most influential legal mind of the past half-century. With the full cooperation of his subject, Domnarski had access to Posner’s letters and to many individuals who may have been unwilling to speak without the approval of Posner himself. Domnarski explores important themes within law and the...
2019-05-251h 22The Legal History PodcastEPISODE 4: Al BrophyIn this episode, Siobhan meets with University, Court and Slave: Pro-Slavery Thought in Southern Colleges and Courts and the Coming of Civil War author Alfred L. Brophy, the Judge John J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law. In his new book, Brophy brings to life the dynamic interplay between law and culture by mapping out the crisscrossing intellectual paths between southern courts and universities in the mid-nineteenth century. Brophy discusses the pro-slavery polemics that were delivered by southern lawyers, judges, and politicians to university students. At the same time, he shows how p...
2019-05-251h 20The Legal History PodcastEPISODE 3: Sara L. CrosbyIn this episode, Siobhan talks with Associate Professor of English at The Ohio State University at Marion, Sara L. Crosby, about her new book, Poisonous Muse: The Female Poisoner and the Framing of Popular Authorship in Jacksonian America. Crosby discusses how the trope of the female poisoner permeated popular literature in the mid-nineteenth century. In her analysis of the 1840 murder trial of Hannah Kinney, we see how the partisan press used the accused as a vessel through which to fight-out central political battles of the day. We then see how jury decisions may serve as a metric for determining wh...
2019-05-251h 10The Legal History PodcastEPISODE 2: Samantha BarbasIn this podcast, Siobhan interviews Samantha Barbas, Professor of Law at University of Buffalo School of Law, about her new book Laws of Image: Privacy and Publicity in America, which provides a history of Americans’ use of law to manage their public image. Barbas approaches this endeavor from the perspective of a legal and cultural historian, tracking the correlation between a growing American image consciousness and the rise of laws, such as the tort of invasion of privacy and damages for emotional distress, which enabled individuals to control and defend their public persona.
2019-05-251h 05The Legal History PodcastEPISODE 1: Mary ZieglerIn this podcast, Siobhan talks with Mary Ziegler, Stearns Weaver Miller Professor of Law at Florida State University College of Law, about her book, After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate. Ziegler’s work uses the landmark American abortion rights case, Roe vs. Wade to explore litigation as a vessel for social change and the role the court plays in democracy. In addition to traditional archival research, Ziegler recorded over one hundred oral histories of people in the pro-life and pro-choice camps, allowing her to move beyond caricatures and delve more precisely into the catalysts for these individ...
2019-05-2550 min