Michael Grossberg
- Sally M. Reahard Professor, Department of History
- Professor, School of Law
- Co-Director, Indiana University Center on Law, Society, and Culture
- Director, Political and Civic Engagement Program
Education
- B.A. at University of California, Santa Barbara, 1972
- Ph.D. at Brandeis University, 1979
Contact Information
|
| Ballantine Hall, Rm. 721, Franklin Hall, Rm. 004D |
| (812) 855-3882 |
Background
I am a historian of United States and I specialize in the history of law. I have a joint appointment in the Department of History and the School of Law. My research focuses on the relationship between law and social change, particularly the intersection of law and the family. I am currently working on a study of child protection in the United States that will assess issues such as child labor, juvenile justice, school reform, disabilities, and child abuse from the 1870s to the present. I recently co-edited the Cambridge History of Law in the United States (2008), a three-volume collection of articles analyzing the central substantive and methodological developments in American legal history from the colonial period to the present. I have also been involved in several family policy research projects such as an initiative to create guidelines for genetic testing in child custody cases. I teach courses in American legal and social history. I edited the American Historical Review from 1995 to 2005 and I have published several articles on scholarly editing.
Selected Awards
- Littleton-Griswold Prize in History of Law and American Society, American Historical Association (1986: for Governing the Hearth)
- Fellow, National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina (1987-1988)
- Indiana University Teaching Excellence Recognition Award (1998-1999)
- Fellow, The Hastings Center on Bioethics (2003)
- American Bar Association Fellowship
- American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship
- Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship
- National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship
- Newberry Library Fellowship
Research Interests
- American legal history
- History of children and the family
- History of American social policy
Courses Recently Taught
- American Legal History
- Children and the Law in Modern America
- Law in America
- Teaching American History
- History of Children and Childhood
- Great American Trials
Publication Highlights
Books
Governing the Hearth: Law and the Family in Nineteenth-Century America. Studies in Legal History. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, l985. [Paperback edition, 1988; Second paperback edition, 1993; Electronic Edition, 2002]
A Judgment for Solomon: The d’Hauteville Case and Legal Experience in Antebellum America. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
[Co-edited with Wendy Gamber and Hendrik Hartog] American Public Life and the Historical Imagination. Notre Dame, IN: The University of Notre Dame Press, 2003.
[Co-edited with Christopher Tomlins] The Cambridge History of Law in America (Cambridge University Press, 2008); Vol. I: Early America (1580-1815); Vol. II: The Long Nineteenth Century (1789-1920); and Vol. III; The Twentieth Century and After (1920-).
Articles
“A Protected Childhood: The Emergence of Child Protection in America.” American Public Life and the Historical Imagination, pp. 213-39.
“Duped Dads and Discarded Children: A Historical Perspective on DNA Testing in Child Custody Cases,” in Mark Rothstein et al., eds., Genetic Ties and the Family: The Impact of Paternity Testing on Parents and Children, (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 97-131.
