Of History and Traditions: Abortion, Patriarchy, and Law in Small Town New England ca. 1860

In this lecture, Masur uses the case of a young woman’s death from an abortion to illuminate the circulation of ideas about gender and women’s bodies -- in both law and popular culture -- at a critical moment in American history. 

Kate Masur is the John D. MacArthur Professor at Northwestern University. A specialist in law and politics in the nineteenth-century United States, she is the author, most recently, of Freedom Was in Sight! A Graphic History of Reconstruction in the Washington, D.C., Region (2024). Her previous book, Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History, a New York Times "critics' pick" for 2021, and the winner of two legal history book prizes.