Laura F. Edwards | Scholars@Duke

Laura F. Edwards
Peabody Family Professor of History in Trinity College of Arts and Sciences

My research focuses on women, gender, and the law in the nineteenth-century, particularly the U.S. South. In addition to articles on these topics, I have published four books: A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction: A Nation of Rights (2015); The People and Their Peace: Legal Culture and the Transformation of Inequality in the Post-Revolutionary South (2009); Scarlett Doesn't Live Here Anymore: Southern Women in the Civil War Era (2000); and Gendered Strife and Confusion: The Political Culture of Reconstruction (1997). The People and Their Peace was awarded the Charles Sydnor Prize for the best book in southern history by the Southern Historical Association and the Littleton-Griswold Prize for the best book in American Law and Society by the American Historical Association. I have received fellowships from the American Bar Foundation,the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Humanities Center, the Newberry Library, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Smithsonian Institution. I am now working on a new book project, Only the Clothes on Her Back: Textiles, Law, and Commerce in the Nineteenth Century United States.

Current Appointments & Affiliations

Peabody Family Professor of History in Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, History, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2014
Professor of History, History, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2005
Professor in Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2017

Contact Information

333 Carr Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Box 90719, Durham, NC 27708-0719
ledwards@duke.edu (919) 668-1435

Background
Education, Training, & Certifications
- Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 1991
- M.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 1987
- B.A., Northwestern University 1985
Duke Appointment History
- Associate Professor in Women's Studies, Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2003 - 2006
- Associate Professor of History, History, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2001 - 2005
- Associate Chair, History, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2003 - 2004
- Visiting Associate Professor, History, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2000 - 2001
Recognition
In the News
- JUN 16, 2018
  
  Law and Public Lands: Lecture broadcast on CSPAN's American History TV
- AUG 23, 2017 The Hill
  
  Why Confederate Statutes Fail to Represent Southern History
- MAY 1, 2017
  
  “Fourteenth Amendment: Transforming American Democracy?” Leon Jaworski Public Program Series for Law Day 2017, Sponsored by the American Bar Association
- OCT 14, 2015
  
  Courts and Reconstruction Era Rights: Lecture for the Supreme Court Historical Society broadcast on CSPAN's American History TV
- AUG 3, 2015 New Books in Law
  
  Podcast: Laura Edwards talks about her book, ‘A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction: A Nation of Rights’
- JUL 1, 2015
  
  Laura Edwards: The Dual Heritage of the Confederate Flag
- APR 7, 2015 McClatchy DC
  
  Laura Edwards comments: ‘Hillary’ by any other name would still be controversial
- APR 8, 2013
  
  Teaching and Mentoring Excellence
Awards & Honors
Expertise
Global Scholarship
- Expertise
  - United States of America (Country)
Research
Selected Grants
- Only the Clothes on Her Back awarded by American Council of Learned Societies 2019 - 2020
- Only the Clothes on Her Back awarded by Newberry Library, 2019 - 2020
Fellowships, Supported Research, & Other Grants
- Visiting Neukom Fellows Chair in Diversity and Law awarded by American Bar Foundation, 2016 - 2017
- Mellon Research Fellowship awarded by The Library Company of Philadelphia and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 2014
- Guggenheim Fellowship awarded by John Simon Guggenheim Foundation 2012 - 2013
- Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship awarded by National Humanities Center 2007 - 2008
- Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities awarded by The Newberry Library 2006 - 2007
- NEH Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded by National Endowment for the Humanities 2000 - 2001
- Research Fellow awarded by American Center for Politics and Public Policy 1998 - 1999
- Smithsonian Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded by National Museum of American History 1995
Publications & Artistic Works
Selected Publications
- Books
  - Edwards, L. F. A Nation of Rights: A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction. NY: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
  - Edwards, L. F. The People and Their Peace: Legal Culture and the Transformation of Inequality in the Post-Revolutionary South. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
  - Edwards, L. F. Scarlett Doesn’t Live Here Anymore: Southern Women in the Civil War Era. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000.
  - Edwards, L. F. Gendered Strife and Confusion: The Political Culture of Reconstruction. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1997.
  - Edwards, L. F. Only the Clothes on Her Back: Women, Textiles, and National Development in the Nineteenth-Century United States, n.d.
- Academic Articles
  - Edwards, L. F. “Rights that made the world right.” Judicature 102, no. 2 (June 1, 2018): 14–25.
  - Edwards, L. F. “Sarah Allingham's sheet and other lessons from legal history.” Journal of the Early Republic 38, no. 1 (March 1, 2018): 121–47. https://doi.org/10.1353/jer.2018.0009.
    Full Text
  - Edwards, Laura F. “The Reconstruction of Rights: The Fourteenth Amendment and Popular Conceptions of Governance.” Journal of Supreme Court History 41, no. 3 (November 2016): 310–28. https://doi.org/10.1111/jsch.12121.
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  - Edwards, L. F. “Textiles: Popular culture and the law.” Buffalo Law Review 64, no. 1 (January 1, 2016): 193–214.
  - Edwards, L. F. “The History in "Critical Legal Histories": Robert W. Gordon. 1984. Critical Legal Histories. Stanford Law Review 36:57-125.” Law and Social Inquiry 37, no. 1 (December 1, 2012): 187–99. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-4469.2012.01301.x.
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  - Edwards, L. F. “The Peace: The Meaning and Production of Law in the Post-Revolutionary United States.” University of California, Irvine Law Review 1 (September 2011): 565–85.
  - Edwards, Laura F. “Southern History as US History.” Journal of Southern History 75, no. 3 (August 2009): 533–64.
    Link to Item
  - Edwards, L. F. “The Forgotten Legal World of Thomas Ruffin: The Power of Presentism in the History of Slave Law.” North Carolina Law Review 87 (March 2009): 855–900.
  - Edwards, L. F. “Status Without Rights: African American and the Tangled History of Law and Governance in the Nineteenth-Century U.S. South.” American Historical Review 112 (April 2007): 365–93.
  - Edwards, L. F. “Enslaved Women and the Law: The Paradoxes of Subordination in the Post-Revolutionary Carolinas.” Slavery & Abolition 26 (August 2005): 305–23.
  - Edwards, L. F. “Law, Domestic Violence, and the Limits of Patriarchal Authority in the Antebellum South.” Journal of Southern History 65 (November 1999): 733–70.
  - Edwards, L. F. “The Problem of Dependency: African Americans, Labor Relations, and the Law in the Nineteenth-Century South.” Agricultural History 72 (1998): 313–40.
  - Edwards, L. F. “The disappearance of Susan Daniel and Henderson Cooper: Gender and narratives of political conflict in the reconstruction-era U.S. South.” Feminist Studies 22, no. 2 (January 1, 1996): 363–86. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178419.
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  - Edwards, LF, Laura F. “’The Marriage Covenant Is at the Foundation of All Our Rights’: The Politics of Slave Marriages in North Carolina after Emancipation.” Law and History Review 14 (1996): 81–124.
  - Edwards, L. F. “Sexual Violence, Gender, Reconstruction, and the Extension of Patriarchy in Granville County, North Carolina.” North Carolina Historical Review 68 (1991): 237–60.
  - Edwards, L. F. “Textiles: Popular Culture and the Law.” Buffalo Law Review 64, no. January 2015 (n.d.): 193–214.
  - Edwards, L. F. “"The Fourteenth Amendment: Transforming Our Relationship to Rights and the Federal Government".” Insights in Law and Society 17, no. Winter 2017 (n.d.): 4–10.
- Book Sections
  - Edwards, L. F. “Afterward.” In The Civil War and the Transformation of American Citizenship, edited by Paul Quigley, 217–36. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2018.
  - Edwards, L. F. “Law as Social History.” In The Oxford Handbook of Legal History, edited by Christopher Tomlins and Markus Dubber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.
  - Edwards, L. F. “Reconstruction and the History of Governance.” In The World the War Made, edited by G. Downs and K. Masur, 30–44. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.
  - Edwards, L. F. “Laura Edwards on the Early Republic, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Women’s History.” In The Historians Behind the History: Conversations with Southern Historians, edited by M. Bever and S. Suarze. Birmingham, AL: University of Alabama press, 2015.
  - Edwards, L. F. “Epilogue.” In Rethinking Emancipation: Legacies of Slavery and the Quest for African American Freedom, edited by W. Link, 252–70. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
  - Edwards, L. F. “The Material Conditions of Dependency: The Hidden History of Free Women’s Control of Property in the Early Nineteenth Century South.” In Signposts: New Directions in Southern Legal History, edited by S. Hadden and P. Minter, 171–92. University of Georgia Press, 2013.
  - Edwards, L. F. “The Contradictions of Democracy in American Institutions.” In Democracy from Book to Life: Language and Practice in the North Atlantic 1750-1850, edited by Joanna Innes and Mark Philp, 40–54. Oxford University Press, 2013.
  - Edwards, L. F. “Up from the Pedestal: The Influence of Anne Scott's Ladies on Southern Women's History.” In Writing Women’s History: A Tribute to Anne Firor Scott, edited by E. Payne, 28–63. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2011.
  - Edwards, L. F. “Reconstruction, Women, and Political Culture.” In Reconstruction in North Carolina, edited by Paul D. Escott. University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
  - Edwards, L. F. “The Civil War and Reconstruction.” In The Cambridge History of Law in America: Volume 2, The Long Nineteenth Century, edited by C. Tomlins and M. Grossberg, 313–44. NY: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
  - Edwards, L. F. “Emancipation and its consequences.” In A Companion to the American South, 269–83, 2007. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470996300.ch16.
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  - Edwards, L. F. “The People’s Sovereignty and the Law: Defining Gender, Race, and Class Differences in the Antebellum South.” In Beyond Black and White: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the United States South and Southwest, edited by S. Cole, 3–34. Arlington, Texas: University of Texas Press for the University of Texas, Arlington, 2004.
  - Edwards, L. F. “Women, Gender, and Labor.” In The Blackwell Companion to 19th Century America, edited by William L. Barney and William L. Edwards, LF, 223–37. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Limited, 2001.
  - Edwards, L. F. “Women and Domestic Violence in Nineteenth-Century North Carolina.” In Lethal Imagination: Violence and Brutality in American History, edited by M. Bellesiles, 115–36. New York: New York University Press, 1999.
  - Edwards, L. F. “Captives of Wilmington: The Riot and Historical Memories of Political Conflict, 1865-1898.” In Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy, edited by Timothy B. Tyson and David S. Cecelski, 113–41. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
  - Edwards, L. F. “U.S. Women’s History.” In Encyclopedia of Social History, 775–77. New York: Garland, 1994.
- Other Articles
  - Edwards, L. F. “You Can’t Go Home Again: Politics, War, and Domestic Life in the Nineteenth-Century South.” Reviews in American History, 1997.
  - Edwards, L. F. “Women and Work in Florida: A Photographic Essay.” Tampa Bay History, 1996.
- Book Reviews
  - Edwards, Laura F. “Anne Twitty, Before Dred Scott: Slavery and Legal Culture in the American Confluence, 1787–1857. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. 285. $49.99 cloth (ISBN 9781107112063)..” Law and History Review. Cambridge University Press (CUP), August 2018. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0738248018000238.
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Teaching & Mentoring
Recent Courses
Scholarly, Clinical, & Service Activities
Presentations & Appearances
Service to the Profession

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Education, Training, & Certifications

Duke Appointment History

In the News

Awards & Honors

Global Scholarship

Expertise

Selected Grants

Fellowships, Supported Research, & Other Grants

Selected Publications

Books

Academic Articles

Book Sections

Other Articles

Book Reviews

Recent Courses

Presentations & Appearances

Service to the Profession