In his L'histoire comme champ de bataille Enzo Traverso points out that memory as a socially relevant phenomenon appeared widely after 1989. The fall of the Soviet empire and the ensuing defragmentation of the world led to a situation in which a multitude of recollections, hitherto retained only in private, could enter the public space. Social memory became an element of identity and simultaneously an instrument of politics, increasingly encroaching upon the domain of legal discourse.

Paper Competition

The relation between capitalism and colonialism has long been of interest to critical and radical geographers.  Although classic texts often presented the relationship between colonialism and capitalism in terms of a transition from the former to the later, today, radical scholarship emphasizes both the capitalist nature of formal colonialism, as well as the ways in which contemporary dynamics of capitalist accumulation are often predicated upon and/or intertwined with relations of coloniality.

The Cummins Grant provides a stipend of $10,000 to support short-term historical research using Special Collections at GW’s Jacob Burns Law Library, which is noted for its continental historical legal collections, especially its French Collection. Special Collections also is distinguished by its holdings in Roman and canon law, church-state relations, international law, and its many incunabula.

This conference will explore how legal professionals, as judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys
and other legal officials, handled different forms of knowledge about emotions in the practice of law, in accordance with, or in opposition to, general social and cultural attitudes and public
opinion. It will further investigate the presence and absence—and their meanings—of emotions
in the courtroom, as a fundamental aspect of criminal law practices. It will take into
consideration not only the emotions which were shown, expected and provoked but also the