Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Barbas at BC Legal History Roundtable

[We have the following announcement from our friends at Boston College concerning our guest blogger, Samantha Barbas.]

We are delighted that on Thursday, October 15, 2015, Samantha Barbas will be joining us for the Boston College Law School Legal History Roundtable. Professor Barbas will be speaking about her new book: Laws of Image: Privacy and Publicity in America (Stanford University Press, 2015). A selection can be found on the Roundtable's webpage.

Samantha Barbas researches and teaches in the areas of legal history, First Amendment law and mass communications law. Her work focuses on the intersection of law, culture, media and technology in United States history. Her recent research has explored the history of the law of privacy and defamation. Barbas holds a Ph.D. in American history from the University of California, Berkeley, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. She was previously an assistant professor of history at Chapman University, a visiting professor of history at U.C. Berkeley, and a lecturer at Arizona State University. She clerked for Judge Richard Clifton on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Honolulu, Hawaii. Barbas’ work has appeared in several law and history journals, including the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, the Rutgers Law Review, and the Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts.

Professor Barbas is working on another book, on the history of privacy and freedom of the press, Time v. Hill and America's Search for Privacy, under contract with Stanford University Press. She is also the author of Movie Crazy: Fans, Stars, and the Cult of Celebrity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001) and The First Lady of Hollywood (University of California Press, 2005).

The event begins at 4:30PM in the rare book room of the BCLS law library.  Refreshments will be available starting at 4:15.  Parking is only allowed in white-lined spaces if you do not have a BC parking permit.  If you will be able to join us, please let Patrick Mahoney know in advance by emailing patrick.mahoney@bc.edu. 

As is our usual practice for the roundtable, Professor Barbas will start by speaking for 10-15 minutes about the book, e.g., what prompted her interest in the project, major points, difficult questions, etc.  Then we have a more general conversation with the group as a whole, present questions and comments, and so forth.