Inaugural Symposium

Friday, October 26, 2007
9:00 a.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Location: Tangeman University Center on the University of Cincinnati campus and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center

Sponsored by The Freedom Center Journal and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

The inaugural symposium of the Freedom Center Journal, "Reconstructions: Historical Consciousness and Critical Transformation," will explore the uses of history to understand ongoing subordination and to craft strategies for social change. This symposium will feature several panel discussions, as well as keynote addresses. (View pdf)

The Schedule
8:45 - 9:00 a.m.: Opening Remarks
Emily Houh, Kristin Kalsem and Verna Williams

9:00 – 10:30 a.m.:  Opening Keynote Panel: Raising Historical Consciousness 
Panelists:  Al Brophy (Alabama), James Campbell (Brown), Adrienne Davis (UNC-Chapel Hill)
 What are the barriers to historical consciousness, particularly concerning subordination?  How do we overcome those  barriers as academics? How do we set the record straight?

10:45 – 12:15 p.m.:  Second Panel: Reconstructed Histories
Panelists:  Courtney Cahill (Roger Williams), Natsu Saito (Georgia State), Kevin Noble Maillard (Syracuse)
 What do reconstructed histories [e.g., histories that haven't been told] tell us about the current state of subordinated groups in particular substantive areas, e.g., family law, immigration?

12:15 – 2:00 p.m. Box Lunch and Informal Conversation 

2:15 – 3:45 p.m.:  Third Panel: Toward Critical Transformation
Panelists: Pamela Bridgewater, (American), Katherine Franke (Columbia), Margaret Montoya (New Mexico) & Christine Zuni Cruz (New Mexico)
How do we effect a critical transformation that is truthful about our history and committed to overcoming it? 

*Evening Session:  At the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center

5:30 – 6:00 p.m.:  Cocktails
6:00 – 7:00 p.m.: Margaret Montoya & Christine Zuni Curz
Performance on the history of treatment to indigenous and Chicana women in the Southwest.
7:00 – 8:30 p.m.:  Dinner and Keynote Speaker: Angela Harris (UC Berkeley - Boalt Hall)

Meet the Participants
Pamela Bridgewater, Professor of Law, American University Washington College of Law
Professor Pamela D. Bridgewater is a lawyer, reproductive rights advocate and activist. She teaches property law, inheritance law and reproduction and the law. She has been involved in the women's health movement for many years providing legal defense of reproductive health care clinics, service providers and activists. Professor Bridgewater also assisted federal and state law makers on issues ranging from clinic violence to contraceptive and sterilization abuse.

Al Brophy, Professor of Law, University of Alabama School of Law
Professor Al Brophy has written extensively on race and property law in colonial, antebellum and early Twentieth Century America. His books are Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Riot of 1921—Race, Reparations, Reconciliation (Oxford University Press 2002) and Reparations Pro and Con (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Courtney Cahill, Associate Professor of Law, Ralph R. Papitto School of Law, Roger Williams University
Professor Cahill has a distinguished academic record and a reputation as a compelling classroom teacher at Washington & Lee and Toledo law schools. A recent addition to the teacher/scholars already on the RWU faculty, she is also an emerging expert in the debates surrounding same-sex marriage, having already published an important article in the Northwestern University Law Review.

James Campbell, Associate Professor of History, Brown University
Professor James Campbell is a specialist in U.S. history, 20th-century African American history, and African history. He is author of Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa (Oxford University Press, 1995; University of North Carolina Press, 1998), which won the Organization of American Historians' Frederick Jackson Turner Prize and the Carl Sandburg Literary Award for Non-Fiction.

Christine Zuni Cruz, Editor-in-Chief, Tribal Law Journal and Professor of Law, University of New Mexico School of Law
Christine Zuni Cruz came to the UNM law school in 1993 to establish the Southwest Indian Law Clinic, which provides students with a hands-on opportunity to practice Indian Law. She had served as a tribal judge, a tribal gaming commissioner and been in private practice for 10 years.

Adrienne Davis, Reef C. Ivey II Research Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law
Adrienne Davis is the Reef C. Ivey II Research Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law, where she teaches Property, Contracts, Trusts and Estates, and a variety of upper-level legal theory courses, including sex equality, law and literature, and slavery. Her scholarship emphasizes the gendered and private law dimensions of American slavery, as well as theories of commodification, law and literature, and reparations.

Katherine Franke, Professor of Law, Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Law & Culture, Columbia University Law School
Professor Franke teaches in the areas of feminist and critical race theory; law and culture; civil rights law; and critical legal thought. Her principal areas of research are U.S. racial history; feminist theory; queer theory; and the rights of women in Afghanistan

Angela Harris, Professor of Law, University of California-Berkley, Boalt Hall School of Law
Before joining the Boalt faculty in 1988, Angela Harris served as a law clerk to Judge Joel M. Flaum of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, and as an attorney in the San Francisco office of Morrison & Foerster. 

Kevin Noble Maillard, Assistant Professor of Law, Syracuse University College of Law
Professor Kevin Noble Maillard’s research merges legal history, trusts and estates, and family law, with a specific focus on mixed race. He has written and presented papers on interracial will disputes and membership issues in American Indian tribes, which have been published by the Michigan Journal of Race and Law, the American Indian Law Review, and the University of Georgia Press. His current book project questions the denial of mixed race in America as evidenced in law, literature, and culture.

Margaret Montoya, Professor of Law, University of New Mexico School of Law
A member of the UNM law school faculty since 1992, Professor Montoya examines issues of race, ethnicity, gender and language, along with cross-cultural discourse. She often teaches seminars on these subjects.

Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Professor of Law, University of Iowa College of Law
Professor Onwuachi-Willig joined the College of Law faculty in 2006 after three years as a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law (King Hall).

Natsu Saito, Professor of Law, Georgia State University College of Law
Professor Natsu Taylor Saito joined the College of Law faculty in 1994. She teaches international law and human rights, race and the law, immigration, criminal procedure, and professional responsibility. In addition, she is an advisor to the Asian American Law Student Association and the Hispanic Student Bar Association. Professor Saito’s scholarship focuses on the legal history of race in the United States, the plenary power doctrine as applied to immigrants, American Indians, and U.S. territorial possessions, and the human rights implications of U.S. governmental policies, particularly with regard to the suppression of political dissent.

Registration Form (pdf)

Hotel Information
A block of 50 rooms has been reserved for conference attendees at the Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza. Conference rate for attendees is $159/person and is good through October 11, 2007.