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Department of History

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.

Legal History Colloquium Schedule

2022-23

Mondays 12:15-1:45pm
Faculty Director: Kim Welch
Graduate Student Assistant: Jessica Fletcher

  • October 3: Fahad Bishara, University of Virginia, “Bazaar: Law, Markets, and the Making of the Muslim World ”-112 Buttrick Hall
  • October 17: Adriana Chira, Emory University (co-sponsored by CLACX), “Rights by Possession: Post-Emancipation Land Politics in Cuba, 1880s-1930s”
  • November 7: Kris Collins, Boston University, “Blood and Nation: Making the Citizen Family in American Law”
  • February 20: Hillay Zmora, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, “Margrave Albrecht ‘Achilles’ of Brandenburg: War, Law, and State Formation in Germany, 1440-1486”
  • March 6: Will Pooley, University of Bristol, “Fraud, Expertise, and Doubt: Prosecuting “Unwitchers” in France, 1790-1940”
  • April 3: Hannah Skoda, St. Johns College, Oxford, “Slaves Using Law in Late Medieval Europe”

*Note: we are also co-sponsoring a book talk with Isabela Morales on Thursday, November 17. More details to come.