Weekend Roundup

• BackStory, a podcast by the historians Ed Ayers, Peter Onuf, and Brian Balogh, has recently completed an episode called Born in the USA, which takes up (among other things) some legal issues, including birthright citizenship. Guests include Laura Wattenberg: Founder, BabyNameWizard.com, Peggy Bendroth: Congregational Christian Historical Society, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: Professor of History, Harvard University, and Jessica Waters, Professor of Law, American University

• Just in time for the History Channel miniseries, the Pike County Tourism, a non-profit in Pike County, Kentucky, reminds us that “The Hatfield McCoy Feud was more than just a shootout, a lot of battles were fought in court” and invites LHB readers to take its Hatfield McCoy Driving Tour.

•  Readers interested in the history of sex discrimination and religious history will find Anne M. Butler's powerful essay Nuns on the Frontier to be of interest.  It appeared in the New York Times, and draws from her forthcoming book Across God’s Frontiers: Catholic Sisters in the American West, 1850-1920.
  

• Matthew A. Axtell, a doctoral candidate in Princeton’s history department, seeks participants on a panel or roundtable “on the environmental history of law for next year’s American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) Conference in Toronto, Ontario (April 3-6, 2013).  The goal of the session would be to present and discuss historical work that analyzes the material ecological and environmental health impacts of differing legal regimes on landscapes, airscapes, waterscapes, animal populations, and/or human bodies across time.”  If interested, send him copy of your paper proposal and your CV to maxtell@princeton.edu  by Friday, June 1, 2012.  Hat tip (and a fuller version of Axtell’s query): H-Law

•  Speech Rights: Legal History as Intellectual History is one of the plenary sessions planned for the 2012 meeting of the Society for U.S. Intellectual History, to be held in New York City November 1-2.  The panel will feature Jack Balkin (Yale University), Vincent Blasi (Columbia University), Ronald Collins (University of Washington), and Catherine Ross (George Washington University).  The call for papers is here, and proposals are due June 1.

• Duquesne University's press release on the passing of Samuel J. Astorino reports that Professor Astorino "had an extraordinary life, growing up and working in the steel mills in Carnegie; serving in the U.S. army; and serving as a special clerk to Justice Nicholas Papadakos on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. . . .  Known for the unique historical perspective that he brought to the study of law, Astorino published numerous articles on local and national public and legal history." 

• Check out the new Oxford Handbook of Governance, "an authoritative and accessible state-of-the-art analysis of the social science literature on governance."

• Some time ago we posted the call for a special issue of Radical History Review, “Calling the Law into Question”: Confronting the Illegal and Illicit in Public Arenas."  It is now out as RHR, Volume 2012, Number 113, Spring 2012.  The table of contents is here.

• Wondering about the state of undergraduate research on constitutional history at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota)?  Then check out this press release.

The Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.