Legal History at the AHA

There is so much legal history at the upcoming meeting of the American Historical Association that I can't list all the panels. If you enter "legal" and "law" on this search page, 119 papers come up. "Rights" turns up another 117 papers. A sampling is below.

This year's meeting is in New York City, January 2-5, 2009. The theme this year is Globalizing Historiography. Details are here.

Creating the “Human Rights Revolution” of the 1970s
Monday, January 5, 2009: 11:00 AM-1:00 PM
Beekman Parlor (Hilton New York)

• Chair: Melani McAlister, George Washington University
• Commentator: Mark Philip Bradley, University of Chicago
• Why Torture Became Unacceptable: Algeria, Greece, and Brazil Compared, Barbara J. Keys, University of Melbourne
• From Latin America to Washington: Advocates, Diplomats, and the Struggle for an American Human Rights Policy, Vanessa Walker, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Freedom House and the Meaning of Human Rights, 1970–89, Carl Bon Tempo, University at Albany (State University of New York)

Russia and the USSR on the Map of International Law: From the Hague Conventions, 1899–1907, to the Nuremberg Trial, 1945–46
Sunday, January 4, 2009: 11:30 AM-1:30 PM
Central Park East (Sheraton New York)

• Chair: Richard Wortman, Columbia University
  Commentator: William E. Butler, Dickinson School of Law at Pennsylvania State University
• Crimes against Humanity: The Russian Empire's Role in Formulating the Allies' May 24, 1915, Note on the Armenian Genocide, Peter I. Holquist, University of Pennsylvania
• The Soviets at Nuremberg: Soviet Legal Experts and the Framing of Postwar International Law, Francine Hirsch, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Western Perceptions of Russian and Soviet Designs of International Law at the Hague Conferences and the Nuremberg Trial, Martin E. Aust, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel

Writing the History of International Humanitarianism
Monday, January 5, 2009: 8:30 AM-10:30 AM
Lenox Ballroom (Sheraton New York)

• Chair: Andrew Zimmerman, George Washington University
• Humanitarianism and Its Legal Limits: Gendered Activism in Wartime, 1864–1914, Jean H. Quataert, Binghamton University (State University of New York)
• Reproductive Freedom: The Genealogy of a Human Right, Ann T. Allen, University of Louisville
• Women's Rights and the Hazards of Intervention in the Middle East, Elizabeth F. Thompson, University of Virginia
• Women, Children, and Citizenship in UNICEF's Global Anti-Syphilis Campaign, 1946–79, Jennifer Morris, College of Mount St. Joseph
• Amnesty International and the Cultural Politics of Suffering, Mark Philip Bradley, University of Chicago

Race, Caste, and Nation in India and the United States since World War II
Friday, January 2, 2009: 3:30 PM-5:30 PM
Lenox Ballroom (Sheraton New York)

• Chair: Gyanendra Pandey, Emory University
• Allies of a Kind: India and the NAACP’s Alliance to End Racial Oppression in South Africa, 1946–51, Carol Anderson, University of Missouri
• Political Rights and Durable Inequality: Caste in India and Race in the United States, Narendra Subramanian, McGill University
• The Prism and the Funnel: Reflections of Race and Caste in the United States and India after 1947, Nico Slate, Harvard University

New Directions in Chicana/o Movement Era Historical Scholarship and the Implications for Understanding Civil Rights in America
Friday, January 2, 2009: 1:00 PM-3:00 PM
Gramercy Suite B (Hilton New York)

• Chair: Ben Vinson, Johns Hopkins University
• Commentator: Ramón A. Gutierréz, University of Chicago
• “Our Mexicans”: The Reaction of Arizona’s Entrepreneurial Elite to the Rise of Chicano/Mexican American Activism, Micaela A. Larkin, University of Notre Dame
• "Equal Medical Care for All": Chicana and Chicano Health Activism in Late 1960s Los Angeles, Virginia Espino, University of California at Los Angeles
• Closing the Breach: The Campaign for Education Equality in the Post-Chicano Movement Era, Maritza De La Trinidad, University of Arizona
• The Brown Berets of Aztlan and Chicano Power in the Long Civil Rights Era, Milo M. Alvarez, University of California at Los Angeles

Minority Debates in Twentieth-Century Europe, East and West
Saturday, January 3, 2009: 9:30 AM-11:30 AM
Sutton Center (Hilton New York)

• Chair: Istvan Deak, Columbia University
• Commentator: Carole K. Fink, Ohio State University
• Minority Controversies across the Bulgarian-Greek Border: Population Exchange, Minority Rights, and Definitions of Minorities in the Interwar Balkans, Theodora Dragostinova, Ohio State University
• On the Viability of Mixed States: Nazi Germany’s Allies Debate Minorities and Statehood, Holly Case, Cornell University
• Why the French Don’t Recognize Minorities: Universalism, Minorities, and Race in France, Laird Boswell, University of Wisconsin-Madison