April 8, 2014 with Professor Ariela Gross (USC)
Ariela Gross, whose research and writing focus on race and slavery in the United States, teaches Contracts, History of American Law, and Race and Gender in the Law.
Professor Gross is the author of What Blood Won’t Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America, which has won several awards, including the 2009 J. Willard Hurst Prize for the best book in sociolegal history from the Law and Society Association; the 2009 Lillian Smith Book Award for the best book on the South from the Southern Regional Council; and the American Political Association's prize for the best book on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics. Gross also is the author of Double Character: Slavery and Mastery in the Antebellum Southern Courtroom (Princeton University Press, 2000; in paperback by University of Georgia Press, 2006) and numerous law review articles and book chapters. She is the co-author of several history textbooks, including America Past & Present (Pearson Longman Pub., 8th ed. 2008).
Professor Gross received her B.A. from Harvard University, her J.D. from Stanford Law School, and her Ph.D. in history from Stanford University. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Frederick J. Burkhardt Fellowship of the American Council of Learned Societies, and an NEH Huntington Library Long-Term Fellowship to support her research for What Blood Won’t Tell. In 2010, she was appointed a Distinguished Lecturer by the Organization of American Historians. She joined the USC Law faculty in 1996.