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

2023-24

Mondays 12:15-1:45pm
Faculty Director: Joel Harrington
Graduate Student Assistant: Jessica Fletcher

• October 9: Myisha Eatmon, Harvard University, “Building an Arsenal: Expanding Litigation Strategies and Black Legal Culture from 1910s-1930s” – lunch provided
• November 6: Zachary Herz, University of Colorado Boulder, “How Does an Emperor Obey the Law?: Vespasian, Titus, Trajan” – lunch provided
• February 5: Megna Chaudhuri, Davidson College, “Time Bargain Contracts: The American Civil War and Fictitious Capital in Colonial Bombay”  – Sarratt 189, lunch provided
• February 9: Mohammed Allehbi, Harvard University, “Creating a New Islamic Criminal Law: “Creating a New Islamic Criminal Law: The Military-Administrative Origins of Siyāsa”, *3:00 PM – Benson 200, lunch provided
• March 25: Jennifer Palmer, University of Georgia, “Partus sequitur ventrem and Patriarchal Authority in the Colonial French Caribbean” – Buttrick 123, lunch provided
• April 8: Arianne Sedef Urus, “Finding ‘the true Pointe Riche’: Law and Geography in Eighteenth-Century Newfoundland” – Sarratt 189, lunch provided
• April 15: Ishay Rosen Zvi, Tel Aviv University, “What Can Mishnah and Midrash Teach Legal Historians?” – Buttrick 123, lunch provided