The Baldy Center Podcast

Baldy Center Podcast Season 1 Trailer

From the tension between contact tracing and privacy to the concept of One Health and zoonotic diseases. From prison labor to airport security. From pirates of Southeast Asia to the legal history of the Holy Roman Empire. They are all coming your way in the first podcast season of The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, produced at the University at Buffalo. With me, Azalia Muchransyah, as your host and producer.

Sarah Ludin discusses the socio-legal history of the Early Reformation in Germany.

In episode 8 of the podcast, Sarah Ludin discusses her developing book manuscript focused on the socio-legal history of the Early Reformation in Germany, which relies on close readings of 1521-1555 C.E. case files in the Holy Roman Empire to understand the historiography of secularism and the definition and significance of religion as a modern secular legal category.

Keywords: Cultural Studies, Constitutional Law, European Cultural Studies, Law and Society, Legal History, Legal Research

Daniel Platt discusses “The Domestication of Credit.”

Episode 7 features Daniel Platt, Assistant Professor at University of Illinois Springfield and former Baldy Center Postdoctoral Fellow. Professor Platt discusses his recent article “The Domestication of Credit,” focused on the moral politics of personal finance in 19th and 20th century U.S., paying specific attention to women’s contributions to household finances, to credit, debt, and financial institutions, and to the roles of coercion and discrimination in a debt economy.

Keywords: Finance and Finance Law, Legal History, Politics, Cultural History

David Gerber and Bruce Dierenfield discuss disability rights and religious freedom.

Episode 6 of the podcast features David Gerber, emeritus professor of history at UB and Bruce Dierenfield of Canisius College. Professors Gerber and Dierenfield discuss their new book, focused on the Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District case at the crossroads of disability rights and church-state separation.

Keywords: Constitutional Law, Education Policy, Legal History, Disability Rights, Church-State Separation.

Jennifer L. Gaynor discusses maritime Southeast Asia.

In Episode 5 of the podcast Jennifer Gaynor, a Baldy Center research fellow, discusses her current research and her previous book, Intertidal History in Island Southeast Asia, which drew on European and Southeast Asian sources, as well as four years in Indonesia, where she worked with rare Bugis language manuscripts and lived in communities of Sama sea people.

Keywords: Cultural Studies, Asian Studies Culture and Law, Culture and Society, Maritime Law, Law and Social Science, Legal History, History.

Amanda Hughett discusses the history of prisoner labor unions.

Episode 4 of the podcast features Amanda Hughett, a former Baldy Center fellow, discussing the history of prisoner labor unions. The work examines how efforts to litigate around prison conditions in the 1970s unintentionally cut against imprisoned people’s efforts to mobilize at the grassroots level.

Keywords: Criminal Law and Procedure, Employment and Labor Law, Labor Markets and Work Policy, Human Rights, Civil Rights, Race, Law and Policy, Social Justice and Social Change

David Westbrook and Mark Maguire discuss airport security and counterterrorism.

Episode 3 of the podcast features David A. Westbrook, UB School of Law and Mark Maguire, National University of Ireland Maynooth. Professors Westbrook and Maguire discuss airport security and counterterrorism, and their new book, Getting Through Security: Counterterrorism, Bureaucracy, and a Sense of the Modern (Routledge, 2020).

Keywords: Cultural Studies, Culture and Society, Law and Social Science, Law and Society, Counterterrorism, Ethnography, Political Economy.

Irus Braverman discusses medical posthumanities.

Episode 2 of the podcast features UB School of Law professor Irus Braverman discussing her upcoming workshop, Medical Posthumanities: Governing Health Beyond the Human. Braverman's work explores holistic approaches to health that include scientific, natural science discussions between ecologists and virologists that also takes into consideration social and cultural understandings and also legal norms.

Keywords: Health and Society, Legal Geographies, Social Justice and Social Change, Environmental Studies Law and Policy, Culture and Society.

Mark Bartholomew discusses contact tracing.

Episode 1 of the podcast features UB School of Law professor Mark Bartholomew. Professor Bartholomew discusses the pandemic, contact tracing, and the tension between public health security and privacy in using technology to track the coronavirus. 

Keywords: COVID-19, Health and Society