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.
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
2025-26
Mondays 3:10-4:45pm
Faculty Director: Kim Welch
Fall 2025
September 29: Lauren Thompson (Kennesaw State), “We Must All be Followers of Margaret Sanger: Women Lawyers and the Politics of Health and Motherhood before 1930,” in Divinity G33 [copy of the paper available here]
December 1: Jacob Betz (Vanderbilt), “Catholic Prenuptial Contracts and the Problem of Legal Pluralism in Postwar America,” in Divinity G29 [copy of the paper available here]
Spring 2026
February 23: Nicholas Terpstra (University of Toronto)
March 16: Phil Stern (Duke University)
April 6: Bianca Premo (Florida International)
April 13: Sara Mayeux (Vanderbilt Law)