Legal History Colloquium
The Legal History Colloquium (LHC) is a speaker series and workshop that brings together historians and other scholars interested in the history of law, socio-legal questions, methods, and theories, and law and society research. The workshop spans across time and place—from ancient Rome, medieval Spain, and colonial Peru to late imperial China and the modern United States. Workshop paper topics vary depending on the speaker’s interests and expertise, but have included themes such as comparative constitutionalism, the legal consciousness of ordinary people, and battles for citizenship and rights. The LHC meets six times per academic year to workshop an invited outside scholar’s work-in-progress, and it meets twice per year to workshop the work-in-progress of Vanderbilt faculty and graduate students. Every two years, the LHC operates in tandem with the Legal History Methods Graduate Seminar, giving graduate students additional face time with the speakers and providing them with a diversity of perspectives on the practice of legal-historical research, socio-legal historiography, and the process of writing and revising.
View the current schedule of events.
To receive regular notices about LHC events, please email the history department to be added to the mailing list.
LHC events are open to the public please, email the history department to be added to the list
Legal History Colloquium Schedule
2024-25
Mondays 12:15-1:45pm
Faculty Director: Joel Harrington
Graduate Student Assistant: Zhiting Sophia Chen
Fall 2024
September 30: Jessica Lowe (VU), Early Modern Germany – Buttrick 206
October 28: Jessica Power (Fisk), Latin America – Buttrick 206
November 14: Yanna Yannakakis (Emory), Colonial Mexico – Furman 109
December 6: Helmut Smith (Vanderbilt) – Benson 200
Spring 2025
January 27: Nicholas Abbott (Old Dominion), Early Colonial India
February 17: Emily Prifogle (Michigan), US Rural Farm Workers
March 17: Nora Barakat (Stanford), Late Ottoman Empire
April 14: Karl Shoemaker (Wisconsin), Medieval Europe