extraordinary remedies
I’m currently remediating my book project Extraordinary Remedies: The Court of Chancery and Equitable Justice in Chicago as a graphic history. As I engage more deeply in public projects, I am decidedly less interested in publishing a traditional monograph. And…
owning hazard
I brought together University of Wisconsin-Madison law, history and theatre students and faculty to produce a scene from the play “Owning Hazard” by Barbara Young Welke, Distinguished McKnight University Professor of History and Law at the University of Minnesota. Welke…
columbus discovers chicago
As someone who delights in Chicago's metropolitan implications, I love this postcard of Columbus' caravels parked off the city's South Side. Spain donated the replicas for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. On the final day of the fair, the Nina,…
map your world
Martinez Zea, Map of Wireless Networks, Favela da Serra, Brazil Sociolegal scholars could learn much from cartography, suggests Boaventura de Sousa Santos. The relationship between law and social reality resembles that between maps and spatial reality. Indeed laws are maps:…
something to send home
As an interdisciplinary historian studying lawmakers and cultural brokers, I have a special affection for this lavishly illustrated nine-volume codex of eighteenth-century Peru, sent home to the King of Spain by Baltasar Jamie Martínez Compañón, aka the Bishop of…
the creative process
As a writer, I swing between heady visions of the powerhouse piece I am bequeathing to mankind and the stark realization that I’ve written yet another embarrassingly bad draft. As I slid towards the bottom of the curve one…
walking the words
Anna Deavere Smith performs oral histories in bare feet so that she can walk in the words of her subjects. An award-winning actress, playwright, teacher, and author, she is also pushing history/legal history into new domains. Deavere Smith explores…
wet with blood
I curated, designed, and produced the Chicago History Museum digital site Wet with Blood: The Investigation of Mary Todd Lincoln’s Cloak as my master's thesis. I received a 2001 Northwestern University Scholars Award for the project.