The next Washington History Seminar Panel is with Mira Siegelberg, Cambridge University, on her book Statelessness: A Modern History, with a comment by LHB Founder Mary L. Dudziak, Emory University. It takes place Monday, December 7 at 4:00 pm ET. Register here. It may be viewed on the National History Center’s Facebook Page or the Wilson Center website.
–Dan Ernst
The next meeting of the Washington History Seminar, on Monday, November 23 at 4:00 pm ET, will be devoted to Ruling the Savage Periphery: Frontier Governance and the Making of the Modern State (Harvard University Press, 2020), by Benjamin Hopkins, George Washington University. Elisabeth Leake, University of Leeds, Geraldine Davies Lenoble, Torcuato Di Tella University, and Benjamin Johnson, Loyola University, will comment. Click here to register for the webinar or watch on the National History Center’s Facebook Page or the Wilson Center website.
[Professor Hopkins] makes a bold claim about the modern global order and the central role "frontier" spaces have made in its construction. Arguing that the "frontier" is a practice rather than a place, Hopkins theorizes that the particular way states govern such spaces – he terms it "frontier governmentality" – presents a unique constellation of power defining states and their limits. Ranging from the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands to the Arizona desert to the Argentine pampas, Hopkins presents an ambitious and provocative global history with continuing purchase today.
--Dan Ernst
[We have the following announcement. DRE]
Call for Abstracts: Fourteenth International Junior Faculty Forum
Sponsored by Stanford Law School, the International Junior Faculty Forum (IJFF) was established to stimulate the exchange of ideas and research among younger legal scholars from around the world. We live today in a global community– in particular, a global legal community. The IJFF is designed to foster transnational legal scholarship that surmounts barriers of time, space, legal traditions and cultures, and to create an engaged global community of scholars. The Fourteenth IJFF will be held at Stanford Law School in fall 2021 (the exact date has not yet been fixed; but it will probably be in October).
In order to be considered for the 2021 International Junior Faculty Forum, authors must meet the following criteria:
Citizen of a country other than the United StatesPapers may be on any legally relevant subject and can make use of any relevant approach: they can be quantitative or qualitative, sociological, anthropological, historical, or economic. The host institution is committed to intellectual, methodological, and regional diversity, and welcomes papers from junior scholars from all parts of the world. Please note, however, that already published papers are not eligible for consideration. We particularly welcome work that is interdisciplinary.
Current academic institution is outside of the United States
Not currently a student in the United States
Have held a faculty position or the equivalent, including positions comparable to junior faculty positions in research institutions, for less than seven years as of 2021; and
Last degree earned less than ten years before 2021.
The next meeting of the Washington History Seminar will be devoted to Francine Hirsch, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her book, Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal After World War II. It will be held on Thursday, November 12 at 4:00 pm ET. Click here to register.
Organized in the wake of World War Two by the victorious Allies, the Nuremberg Trials were intended to hold the Nazis to account for their crimes and to restore a sense of justice to a world devastated by violence. As Francine Hirsch reveals in her groundbreaking new book, a major piece of the Nuremberg story has routinely been left out: the critical role of the Soviet Union. Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg offers a startlingly new view of the International Military Tribunal and a fresh perspective on the movement for international human rights that it helped launch.
--Dan Ernst
Registration is required. Zoom link will be sent before the day of the event. Please join Professor Mary Bilder and Professor Dan Farbman as they welcome Franita Tolson, Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs and Professor of Law at USC Gould School of Law, to discuss her forthcoming book and the election. Following the discussion will be a Q&A session. Free and open to the public.
--Dan Ernst
[We have the following announcement on an online event, sponsored by the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History. DRE]
On November 5th, the "Global Legal History on the Ground" project will host an online event on court cases in the writing of African History and Legal History.
Time: 10 am - Atlanta; 12 pm - Brasília; 4 pm - Frankfurt am Main and Luanda. Registration per e-mail: diaspaes@rg.mpg.de
Mariana Dias Paes (Max Planck Institute for European Legal History) - Introdução e apresentação das integrantes do projeto
Fernanda Thomaz (Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora) - Fontes judiciais e conflitos de formas normativas na história de Moçambique
Mariana Candido (Emory University) - As mulheres na documentação do Tribunal da Comarca de Benguela: novas fontes e questões para a história de Angola no século XIX
José Évora (Arquivo Nacional de Cabo Verde) - O acervo documental do ANCV e o desafio de uma história vista a partir do rés-do-chão: pistas para uma história do direito cabo-verdiano
This event will be held in Portuguese, but we will organize other talks in English and Spanish during 2021. For more information on the project, [here].
From the Columbia News:
On October 20, 2020, leading scholars examined the intersections of 19th-century history with contemporary politics, and offered visions for America’s future, during “Why Reconstruction Matters.” The online event was moderated by Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger and introduced by Vice Provost and University Librarian Ann Thornton. Nearly 700 people viewed the panel, which was cosponsored by the World Leaders Forum and Columbia Libraries.
The panelists—Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, professor at Columbia Law School, Eric Foner, emeritus professor of history, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., filmmaker and Harvard professor—have each written extensively about the period of Reconstruction, and were all featured in a recent PBS documentary series on the topic.
--Dan Ernst
[We have the following announcement. DRE]
Legal Histories of Empire Symposium: Rohit De and Catherine Evans
Please join us for the first of several planned symposia in 2020 and 2021 for Legal Histories of Empire and for the celebration of a special birthday of the founder of the Legal Histories of Empire Conferences.
Our speakers:
Rohit De: "Brown Lawyers, Black Robes: Decolonization, Diasporic Lawyers and Minority Rights"
Rohit De is Associate Professor of History at Yale University and is the author of A People's Constitution: The Everyday Life of Law in the Indian Republic (2018). As a Carnegie Fellow, he is currently working on a book on a history of rebellious lawyering and decolonization
Catherine Evans: “Civilization as Sanity in the Victorian Empire”
Catherine L. Evans is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto. Her first book, Unsound Empire: Civilization and Madness in Late-Victorian Law, comes out next fall (Yale University Press, 2021).
Timezones:
New Haven/Toronto @ 4 pm on 30 October
Vancouver @ 1pm on 30 October
Sydney @ 7 am on 31 October
Auckland @ 9 am on 31October
London/Dublin @ 8 pm on 30 October
Singapore @ 4 am on 31 October
Registration: Free via Eventbrite [here]. Registration is required. You will be emailed a Zoom link 36 hours before the event.
Linda K. Kerber to Deliver the 2020 Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture
ACLS is pleased to announce that historian Linda K. Kerber, May Brodbeck Professor in the Liberal Arts and Professor of History Emerita, Lecturer in Law at The University of Iowa, will deliver the Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture virtually from the College of Law at The University of Iowa the afternoon of Wednesday, October 28, 2020, at 3 pm ET. Register now for this virtual event.
Kerber received the AB from Barnard College and the PhD in history from Columbia University in 1968. In 2006 she was Harmsworth Professor of Amercan History at Oxford University.
Kerber is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She served as president of the American Studies Association in 1998, the Organization of American Historians in 1996-97, and the American Historical Association in 2006-07.
In her writing and teaching Kerber has emphasized the history of citizenship, gender, and authority. Her teaching has been recognized by the University of Iowa Graduate College Special Recognition/ Outstanding Mentor Award in the Humanities and Fine Arts. She is the author of No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship (1998) for which she was awarded the Littleton-Griswold Prize for the best book in U.S. legal history and the Joan Kelley Prize for the best book in women’s history (both awarded by the American Historical Association). Her other books include Toward an Intellectual History of Women (1997), Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (1980), and Federalists in Dissent: Imagery and Ideology in Jeffersonian America (1970). She is co-editor of the widely used anthology, Women’s America: Refocusing the Past (9th edition, 2020).
“The Stateless as the Citizen’s Other: A View from the United States,” appeared in the American Historical Review, February 2007 and is the foundation of her current research and writing. She serves on the Board of Trustees of the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, based in the Netherlands and is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Statelessness and Inclusion, based in Melbourne, Australia. Following her interest in strengthening academic exchange between the United States and Japan, she served for five years as a member of the Japan-U,S. Friendship Commission/CULCON, a federal agency. She recently completed a term on the Permanent Committee of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court of the United States, to which she was appointed by President Barack Obama.
Named for the first chairman of ACLS (1920-26), the Haskins Prize Lecture series is entitled “A Life of Learning” and celebrates scholarly careers of distinctive importance. The lectures are published in the ACLS Occasional Paper series and made available on the ACLS website (see Haskins Prize Lectures).
We have news of the Instituto de Investigaciones de Historia del Derecho, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Founded in 1973, the Instituto is, deputy director Viviana Kluger tells us, “is the most important institution regarding legal history research in Argentina.” It publishes Revista de Historia del Derecho, “a bi-annual journal indexed in international platforms,” and has a weekly seminar, conducted over Zoom and open to interested scholars. It’s first session is tomorrow. Dra. Ana Brisa Oropeza Chávez, Universidad de Anahuac-México, will present Los programas de Historia del Derecho en la enseñanza universitaria de México.
The complete schedule is here. Notices of upcoming sessions are as follows: October 13, October 20, October 29, November 3, November 12, November 19,and November 26.
Update: The Instituto records and posts all sessions of its seminar on YouTube. You can also find the Instituto on Facebook, Instagram (inhide_oficial) and Twitter (@INHIDE_oficial).
--Dan Ernst
[We have the following announcement. DRE]
The National History Center of the American Historical Association invites you to attend our briefing, Federal Responses to Economic Crisis, Monday, October 5, 2020, 11:00 am EST. Register here.
The Coronavirus pandemic has killed vast numbers of people across the world, transformed the work and home lives of many millions, and has sent many of the world's economies into a tailspin. Indeed, the economic damage produced by the pandemic promises to challenge Americans and others abroad for years to come.
How should the federal government respond to the ongoing challenges generated by this crisis? This is a question that American citizens and their elected representatives have been debating passionately and loudly this year. Despite some fleeting moments of agreement on public policy responses over the past months, the question produces no single answer. Should the federal government continue to aid the victims, both businesses and individuals, harmed by the pandemic? What larger role should the government play in the economy going forward? Not surprisingly, Congress, our political parties, and Americans across the nation find themselves in disagreement about the path forward that the federal government should pursue.
This Congressional Briefing of the American Historical Association's National History Center steps back from the current moment to explore the history of the federal government's role in handling economic downturns and crises at various points in the twentieth century. Its subjects are the federal government's response to the Great Depression of the 1930s, the economic downturns (admittedly far less severe than the Great Depression) in the 1950s, and the urban crisis of the 1960s -- all moments when presidents and Congress debated and implemented a variety of programs designed to address economic distress. As always, our approach is nonpartisan and is not aimed at answering the question about the future. Rather, it is to show that the arguments about policy during our present crisis have counterparts in the past. As the American Historical Association frequently notes, everything has a history. This Congressional Briefing of the National History Center steps back from our current moment to explore the history of federal responses to economic crises at key moments in the last century.
Speakers:
Eric Rauchway, University of California, Davis
Jennifer Delton, Skidmore College
Lizabeth Cohen, Harvard University
Moderator:
Eric Arnesen, George Washington University
[We have the following announcement. DRE]
[We have the following announcement. DRE]
Tel Aviv University Law and History Workshop, Fall 2020, Thursdays, 14:15 - 15:45. Organized by Rachel Friedman, Ron Harris & Assaf Likhovski.
Nov. 5, 2020, Jedidiah Kroncke, University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law, The Harvard Model as Domestic and International Export: A Translocal Movement of Elite Legal Integration
Nov. 12, 2020, Yair Lorberbaum, Bar Ilan University Faculty of Law, The Rise of Halakhic Religiosity of Mystery and Transcendence [paper and discussion in Hebrew]
Nov. 19, 2020, Aviram Shahal, Michigan Law School, From Konstitutzya to Huka: The Adoption of a Hebrew Term for a Constitution [discussion in Hebrew]
Nov. 26, 2020, Vanessa Ogle, University of California, Berkeley, Department of History, "Funk Money:" The End of Empires, the Expansion of Tax Havens, and Decolonization as an Economic and Financial Event
Dec. 3, 2020, Rowan Dorin, Stanford University, Department of History, The Bishop as Lawmaker in Late Medieval Europe
Dec. 10, 2020, Geraldine Gudefin, American University Department of History & Tel Aviv University, Berg Institute, "An Innocent Candor that Left No Doubt as to her Sincerity": East European Jewish Women and Jewish Law in Early 20th-Century American Courts"
Dec. 17, 2020, Emily Kadens, Northwestern Law School, "The Dark Side of Commerce: Trust, Reputation, and Cheating in Early Modern England."
Dec. 24, 2020, Idit Ben Or, Tel Aviv University Safra Center, Non-Governmental Currencies in Early Modern England: A Legal Analysis [discussion in Hebrew]
Dec. 31, 2020, Julie Cooper, Tel Aviv University, Department of Political Science, The Zionist Critique of Spinoza's Politics [discussion in Hebrew]
Jan. 7, 2020, Adam Lebovitz, Cambridge University Faculty of History, Freedom of the Press between the American and French Revolutions
*** All sessions of the workshop will take place on Zoom. We have a limited number of slots available in each session for visitors. Anyone who is interested in participating in a particular session must register in advance by sending an email to rachelf3@tauex.tau.ac.il. ***
