Race, Law and Social Justice: An Introduction | DEMOS21

Miranda Spieler is an associate professor of history at the American University of Paris. She is the author of Empire and Underworld: Captivity in French Guiana (Harvard University Press, 2012), which received the American Historical Society’s George Mosse prize and J. Russell Major Prize. Her work-in-progress, Slaves in Paris, reconstructs the lives of slaves and masters using hitherto undiscovered archival materials to construct a global history of Old Regime Paris as an imperial capital. Her scholarship is particularly concerned with the meaning of personhood, the architecture of legal space, and the role of law in enabling state violence.

Michelle Kuo is an associate professor of History, Law, and Society at the American University of Paris. Her book, Reading with Patrick (2017, Random House) explores incarceration, racial inequality, and literacy in the rural South. It was the runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In her work as a lawyer, Michelle has clerked for a federal judge for the Ninth Circuit and defended incarcerated and undocumented people. Currently she is a pro bono attorney for the Stanford Three Strikes Project and recently helped found a nonprofit that creates a global network of formerly incarcerated people.