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Diana Irene Williams

  • Assistant Professor, 2008-
  • Founders Hall Room 217
  • Fall 2008 Office Hours: Tuesdays 2:50-4:50pm
  • contact me


RECENT AND UPCOMING PRESENTATIONS

Title TBA. Talk at the Massachusetts Historical Society Urban History Seminar, January 29, 2009.

"Staging The Octoroon in Reconstruction New Orleans." Boston University Legal History Colloquium, October 29, 2008.

"Plaçage, Travel Narratives, and the Law of Cohabitation in Antebellum New Orleans." Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Minneapolis, June 2008.

"A Historical Perspective on Contemporary Constructions of Obama." Race and New Media Conference, Brooklyn, NY, May 2008

"'Proof of the Due and Formal Celebration': What the Widow's Pension Claims of Women of Color Can Tell Us About Changing Legal and Social Norms of Marriage Following the Civil War." American Society for Legal History Meeting, Tempe, Arizona, October 2007.

Gallery Talk on Kara Walker, Global Feminisms Exhibit, Davis Museum, Wellesley College, 7 November 2007.

"'Some might look white and be colored, and some may be dark and might be white:' State Colorblindness and the Plessy Paradox." Latina and Latino Critical Legal Theory (LatCrit) Conference, 6 October 2007.

Roundtable on "Variations on a Theme: Miscegenation in a Comparative Perspective." Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, Worcester, MA, July 2007.

"'Religion Law' vs. Civil Law: Interracial Marriage and Jurisdictional Conflict in Pre-Civil War Louisiana." Legal History Colloquium, Harvard Law School, December 2006.

Thanks to Ethan Thomas, Publications Associate and Senior Graphic Designer, Harvard Law School Publications Center, for the poster design, and to the Louisiana State Museum and the Historic New Orleans Collection for permission to use images from their collections in this poster.

"'Would You Refuse to Recognize the Duties that the Marriage Laws Impose Upon Us?' Interracial Marriage, Lay Trusteeism, and Canon Law in 1840s Louisiana." North American Religions Colloquium, Harvard Divinity School, November 2006.

"'A Marriage of Conscience': Interracial Marriage, Jurisdictional Conflict, and Gendered Freedoms in Antebellum Louisiana." Invited Presentation, the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, The University of Notre Dame, October 2006.

"The Myth of Racial Democracy in Creole Louisiana: Case Studies from the Nineteenth Century," Conference on Race and Democracy: New Challenges in the Americas, sponsored by the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies and the Latin American Center, University of California, Los Angeles, April 2006.

"Family Drama: Race and the Political Economy of Inheritance in 19th Century Louisiana," presented to the Political Economy Workshop of the Charles Warren Center, 7 March 2006.

"Before Plessy: Racial Determination in Louisiana Civil Rights Cases." Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, 2005.

"'Consensual' Relations and American Freedom: Revisioning the Quadroon Balls." Invited talk, Gendered Resistance Symposium, Miami University of Ohio, 2005; forthcoming in anticipated Gendered Resistance anthology, ed. Mary Frederickson and Delores Walters.