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Conference on Politics in 19th-Century American Law and Literature

4/10
Add to Calendar 2026-04-10 09:00:00 2026-04-11 11:00:00 Conference on Politics in 19th-Century American Law and Literature Event details: https://www.law.uchicago.edu/events/conference-politics-19th-century-american-law-and-literature - University of Chicago Law School blog@law.uchicago.edu America/Chicago public —
Room V
1111 East 60th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637
Open to the public

The Conference on Politics in 19th-Century American Law and Literature is co-sponsored by the University’s Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture.

Program

  • Friday, April 10, 2026
    • Opening Remarks
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      • Dean Adam Chilton and Alison LaCroix

    • Session 1: Student Papers
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      • Chair: Richard McAdams

        • Ali Hasan, “Trial on Trial: The Limits of Criminal Justice in Twain’s America”
        • Hershey Suri, “The Influence of Aiken’s Theatrical Adaptation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin”
        • Darya Treanor, “Mark Twain’s Whig History” 
    • Break
      • -
    • Session 2: Early Century
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      • Chair: Farah Peterson

        • Bernadette Meyler, "Hugh Henry Brackenridge, Lawyer, Politician, & Writer, Representing Himself."
        • Darrell A.H. Miller, “The Fallen State:  Political Consciousness in the Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne”
        • Eric Slauter, “Criticism on the Declaration of Independence, as a Literary Document”
    • Break
      • -
    • Session 3: Race, Reconstruction, and Rights
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      • Chair: Jennifer Nou

        • Emma Grace Brush, “Plain Style, Plain Text: The Antebellum Slave Narrative and the Rise of Constitutional Formalism”
        • Emily Buss, “Huck Finn’s ‘Developmental Vernacular’”
        • Christopher Charles Freeburg, “The Plessy Case and Black Literary Studies”
    • Break
      • -
    • Session 4: Economics
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      • Chair: Jonathan Masur

        • Douglas G. Baird, “Politics, Law, and the Lost Art of Public Oratory”
        • Saul Levmore, presented by J. Masur, “Sunk Costs and Lobbying in The Gilded Age”
  • Saturday, April 11, 2026
    • Session 5: Melville
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      • Chair: Bridget Fahey

        • Alison L. LaCroix, “Rebels, Retribution, and Re-establishment: Melville’s Battle-Pieces and Civil War Constitutionalism”
        • John Bryant, “’You Know What Sailors Are’: Mutiny in Melville’s Omoo, Bartleby, and Billy Budd
        • Richard H. McAdams, “The Ambivalence of Billy Budd”
    • Break
      • -
    • Session 6: Late Century
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      • Chair: Aziz Huq

        • Jennifer Fleissner, “Billy Budd, the Trial of Garfield's Assassin, & Modern Personhood”
        • Justine S. Murison, “William Dean Howells in the Age of Comstock”
        • Kenneth Warren, “Politics Against the Novel: Albion W. Tourgée and Sutton E. Griggs”