The Studio for Law and Culture (SLC@CLS) grew out of the former Center for the Study of Law and Culture. The Center facilitated interdisciplinary academic study, research and scholarship on the intersections of law and culture.
The focus of SLC@CLS is arts and humanities-based public programs about law, social justice and human rights culture that teach and support civic literacy and capacity, both on and off campus. Embracing an expansive definition of culture as a concept whose boundaries range from the aesthetic to the political, SLC@CLS supports projects that understand law in a strict institutional or positivist sense, as well as those that approach law more generally as a regime for ordering social life, constructing cultural meaning, and shaping group and individual identities.
A core mission of SLC@CLS is to use the arts and culture to connect and collaborate with vulnerable communities and constituencies that have historically been excluded from full participation in American institutions and public life.
Podcasts from 2025
Podcast: CRT2 S4 Ep1: Echoes of History in the Future of Immigration: Revisiting the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Ashley Acosta, Arjun S. Dasari, Jermaine Washington, Brooke Greenwood, Donna Hylton, Gemma Solimene, Mae Ngai, and Rose Cuison-Villazor
Podcast: CRT2 S4 Ep2: 60 Years of the Voting Rights Act: Race, Citizenship, and Redemption, Teresa Singh, Jordina Rust, Eden Esemuede, Reynaldo Wilson, Desmond Meade, Kerrel Murray, Juan Moreno Haines, and Dante Jones
Podcast: CRT2 S4 Ep3: Sixty Years of the Civil Rights Act: Built by a Movement, Enoch Adelani, Molly Martinez, Praavita Kashyap, Zoe Dogbeavou, Joyce Ladner, and Robert Fullilove
Podcast: CRT2 S4 Ep4: Echoes of Freedom: Artivism, Censorship and the Civil Rights Movement, Kendall Thomas and William Eric Waters
Podcasts from 2024
Podcast: CRT2 S3 Ep1: Racial Literacy and Disability: The Dyslexia to Prison Pipeline, Reakash Walters, Nikita Agarwal, Priyanka Radhakrishnan, Ameer Baraka, and David Stovall
Podcast: CRT2 S3 Ep2: Eminent Domain: Discriminatory Land Takings and the Fight for Reparations, Dora Chan, Jane Spencer, Lias Borshan, Flores Forbes, and Kavon Ward
Podcast: CRT2 S3 Ep3: Digital Literacy: Unveiling the Roots of Surveillance Capitalism, Disha Wadekar, McKenzie Funk, and Sarah Lamdan
Podcasts from 2022
Podcast: CRT2 S1 Ep0: Trailer, Flores Forbes and Kendall Thomas
Podcast: CRT2 S1 Ep1: The Scarlet Letter of Incarceration: Barriers to Women’s Re-Entry, Shira Flugelman, Jessica Gadea Hawkins, Harmony Hope, DeAnna Hoskins, Ailee Katz, and Vivian D. Nixon
Podcast: CRT2 S1 Ep1: The Scarlet Letter of Incarceration: Special Mini Feature, Shira Flugelman, Jessica Gadea Hawkins, and Shameeka France
Podcast: CRT2 S1 Ep2: CRT and Family Regulation System: Toward Abolition, Anna Arons, Abie Green, Joyce McMillan, Dorothy Roberts, Angela Yu, and Manny Zhang
Podcast: CRT2 S1 Ep3: Movement Lawyering in Law School, Gavin Coyle, Maneka Khanna, Joo-Hee Kim, Alejo Rodriguez, and Susan P. Sturm
Podcast: CRT2 S1 Ep4: Critical Race Theory, Columbia Law School and the Legacies of Slavery: The Black Male Initiative, Stephanie Abrahams, Katherine M. Franke, Darren L. Hutchinson, Athena D. Mutua, Paul Riley, and Koko Zhang
Podcast: CRT2 S1 Ep5: Race and the Reality of Reproductive Rights in the United States, Sruthi Bopanna, Lise Mitsinga, Anna Rupani, Carol Sanger, and Sol A. Vásquez Ortiz
Podcast: CRT2 S1 Ep6: Intersectionality and Violence Against Women, Alice Chan, Maria de la Cruz Rodriguez Martinez, and Marica L. Wright
Podcast: CRT2 S1 Ep7: Color Lines: Geography and Racial Control, David Alexander, Stephanie Cooper, Flores Forbes, Keith Geddings, Bridget McCoy, and Eli Turner
Podcast: CRT2 S1 Ep8: The Backlash to CRT in France, Annah Akhoun-Murat, Marie-Alice Legrand, Maboula Soumahoro, and Joe Sullivan
Podcast: CRT2 S1 Ep8: The Backlash to CRT in France: Special Feature, Annah Akhoun-Murat, Sylvie Laurent, Marie-Alice Legrand, and Joe Sullivan
Podcast: CRT2 S2 Ep1: Gun/Control: The Criminalization of Black Gun Ownership in America, Harry Reis, Elias Passas, Drew Brazer, Christopher Sina Faroghi, Carol Anderson, Jelani Cobb, Jarrell Daniels, Meghna Philips, and Alice Ristroph
Podcast: CRT2 S2 Ep2: Prisoner Re-entry: Theatre and Ritual, Alexander Anderson, Kevin Bott, Hasson Harris Sr., Ted Oppenheim, Suzy Petcheam, and Josie Whittlesey
Podcast: CRT2 S2 Ep3: Juvenile (In)Justice: The School to Prison Pipeline’s Exploitation of Black and Brown Youth, Kiana Phillips, Preston Fregia, Meanna Gray, Jarrell E. Daniels, Henry Danner, Jenay Nurse, and Natalie Peeples
Podcast: CRT2 S2 Ep5: War on Drugs – Marijuana Commerce, Alex Anderson, Mika’il DeVeaux, and Eli Northrup
Podcast: CRT2 S2 Ep7: White Collar Crime: Racial Disparity and Restitution, Alyssa Curcio, Alex Mendoza, Imani Thornton, and Tanya Pierce
Publications from 2014
Paper: A Pre-History of Performing Rights in Anglo-American Copyright Law, Derek Miller
Paper: Executing Whiteness: Fictional and Nonfictional Accounts of Capital Punishment in the United States, 1915-1940, Daniel LaChance
Paper: Law and Fiction in Medieval Iceland: The Story in the Gragas Manuscripts, Thomas J. McSweeney
Paper: Leroy Pitzer: Citizen, Voter, Lunatic?, Rabia Belt
Paper: Remaking Indians, Remaking Citizens: Peruvian and Mexican Perspectives on Criminal Law and National Integration, Lior Ben David
Paper: The Tower of Babel: Human Rights and the Paradox of Language, Moria Paz
Publications from 2013
Paper: Can Moving Pictures Speak? Silent Film, Free Speech, and Social Science in Early 20th Century Law, Jennifer Petersen
Paper: Demanding the Angels’ Share: Intellectual Property and Spiritual Organization in the Urantia Foundation, Andrew Ventimiglia
Paper: Judging Genocide in Rwanda: Lay Judges and Mass Prosecutions in Local Courts, Chakravarty Chakravarty
Paper: Nature, Nurture, Narrative, Law: The Wellesley Case, Oliver Twist, and the Victorian Anxiety about Parentage, Sarah Abramowicz
Paper: Responsible Shares and Shared Responsibility: In Defense of Responsible Corporate Officer Liability, Amy J. Sepinwall
Paper: The Administration of Genius: Expertise and the Patent Bargain, Kara W. Swanson
Paper: The Aesthetics of Affirmative Action, Brian Soucek
Paper: The Power to Destroy: Discriminatory Property Assessments and the Struggle for Tax Justice, Andrew W. Kahrl
Paper: “Willing Victims” and “Innocence Unguarded”?: Ambiguous Volition, Perishable Promises, and Disavowed Consent in Fielding’s Amelia, Nicole M. Wright
Paper: “You Will See My Family Became So American”: Immigration, Racial Visibility, and Specular Citizenship, Sherally Munshi
Publications from 2011
Paper: “Corporation Law is Dead”: The Mystery of Corporation Law at the Height of the American Century, Harwell Wells
Paper: Home Rule: Equitable Justice in Progressive Chicago and the Philippines, Nancy Buenger
Paper: Regret, Remorse and Accidents: Where the New Apology Laws Go Wrong, Jeffrey S. Helmreich
Paper: Serving 99 to 149 Years for Wearing Butt-Huggers and Resisting to Subscribe to Cable TV: The Presence of the Law in Chicano Theatre, Maria Patrice Amon
Paper: The Fortas Film Festival, Brian L. Frye
Paper: The Nation and Its Heretics: ‘Muslim Citizenship’, State Power and Minority Rights in Pakistan, Sadia Saeed
Paper: Tradition, Precedent, and Power in Roman Egypt, Ari Bryen
Publications from 2010
Paper: RCA v. Whiteman: Contested Authorship, Copyright, and the Racial Politics of the Fight for Property Rights in Musical Recordings in the 1930s, Kurt Newman
Paper: Hobbes and Wolf-Man: Melancholy and Animality in Modern Sovereignty, Diego Rossello
Paper: Knowledge Games, Truth Seeking, and Organ Transplants Regulation, Marie-Andrée Jacob
Paper: Missionaries, Moral Advocacy, and the Transformation of Police Court Procedure in London, 1876-1930, Sascha Auerbach
Paper: "Petitions Without Number": Women’s Petitions and the Early Nineteenth-Century Origins of Marriage-Based Entitlements, Kristin Collins
Paper: “Wife Beating” and “Uninvited Kisses” in the Supreme Court and Society in the Early Twentieth Century, Elizabeth Katz
Publications from 2009
Paper: Blackboard Jungle: Delinquency, Psychiatry, and the Bio-Politics of Brown, Anders Walker
Paper: Cultural Culprits, Michelle McKinley
Paper: Fast-Fish, Loose-Fish: How Whalemen, Lawyers, and Judges Created the British Property Law of Whaling, Robert Deal
Paper: From Privacy to Liberty: Sharing After Lawrence, Thomas P. Crocker
Paper: Is Cyberprostitution Prostitution? New Paradigm, Old Crime, Brooke Campbell
Paper: The Transformation of the Laws of War Into Humanitarian Law, Mark Antaki
Publications from 2008
Paper: A Woman’s Right to be Spanked: Testing the Limits of Tolerance of S/M in the Socio-Legal Imaginary, Ummni Khan
Paper: Blood Quantum and Equal Protection, Rose Cuison Villazor
Paper: Critical Acts of Recognition: Reading Law Rhetorically, Sarah Burgess
Paper: Divorcing Family Law from the Nation, Philomila Tsoukala
Paper: Recording Artists, Work For Hire, Employment, and Appropriation, Matt Stahl
Paper: Respect and Resistance in Punishment Theory, Alice Ristroph
Paper: Social Life and Civic Education in the Rio de Janeiro City Jail, Amy Chazkel
Paper: The Sit-ins and the Failed State Action Revolution, Christopher W. Schmidt
Publications from 2006
Paper: Equality with a Vengeance – Women Conscientious Objectors in Pursuit of a "Voice" and Substantive Gender Equality, Noya Rimalt
Paper: Healing the Bishop: Consent and the Legal Erasure of Colonial History, Jennifer Anne Hamilton
Paper: Interrogating Torture and Finding Race, Ayanna Thompson
Paper: Origins of the Asymmetric Society: Freedom of Incorporation in the Early United States and Canada, Jason Kaufman
Paper: Paradoxes of Constitutional Democracy, Kevin Olson
Paper: Recognizing Victimhood, Christine Wilke
Paper: “The Inalienable Rights of the Beasts”: Organized Animal Protection and the Language of Rights in America, 1865-1900, Susan Pearson