13119

SoSe 22: Global Legal Histories

Katharina Isabel Schmidt

Information for students

On the followiung days the seminar will be held online: 20 April, 4, 11 and 18 May, 8 and 15 June, 6 and 13 and 20 July

Comments

This seminar introduces students of all time periods and geographic areas to the study of legal history. We begin by looking at law’s place in world-historical narratives about state- and nation-building, revolution and civil war, colonialism and empire. In doing so, we will pay close attention to the plural legalities these processes relied on and produced. We then move on to talking about law’s nature and sources, including culture, power, and justice. Drawing on historical and anthropological case studies, we will familiarize ourselves with the vocabulary people in different times and places used to articulate—and negotiate—claims of right and wrong. We conclude by critically examining how law has structured concrete spheres of human existence, including race, gender and sexuality, the market, and world order. Challenging Eurocentric approaches that have long dominated the discipline, we will explore global legal histories ranging from Canada’s North-West Territory to Spanish America, Xhosa-Land, colonial South Asia, and the Western Indian Ocean. Provincializing state power, we foreground unofficial, customary, and religious norms, including Cree legality, mestizo international law, and Islamic jurisprudence. We also look at law not only through the eyes of magistrates but through the eyes of ordinary men and women fighting for their rights—in court and on the streets. In this way, law emerges from our readings as perennially “in-between”: bondage and freedom, the global and the local, professional practice and everyday experience. close

14 Class schedule

Regular appointments

Wed, 12:00 - 14:00 14 Class schedule

Wed, 2022-04-20 12:00 - 14:00

Lecturers:
Dr. Katharina Isabel Schmidt