News & Announcements
June 13, 2023
Announcing the 2023 Hurst Fellows
The ASLH is proud to announce the recipients of the 2023 Hurst fellowships.
The Hurst fellows will attend the twelfth James Willard Hurst Summer Institute in Legal History. A flagship program of the ASLH, the Hurst also enjoys generous support from the University of Wisconsin Law School, where Willard Hurst taught for many years. “The Hurst,” as it is affectionately called by many legal historians, is a biennial workshop devoted to in-depth discussion of the research of early career legal historians.
The Hurst has a storied history. The first Institute was held in 2001, with support from students and colleagues of James Willard Hurst and from his widow, Frances. An early fellow called it “legal history bootcamp,” and an entire generation of scholars are now alums of the Hurst. Risa Goluboff, dean of the University of Virginia Law School, called the Hurst a “priceless treasure,” because the program builds community and collegiality as well as fine scholarly insight and analysis.
In 2017, the ASLH began a campaign to place the Hurst on a permanent financial footing. Thanks to the fundraising mission articulated by Ray Solomon, Hurst alumni, as well as the friends, families, students, colleagues, and the universities of more than a dozen distinguished scholars in the field, made possible the creation of 15 named fellowships, of which 12 were awarded this year to early career scholars (the fellowships will be awarded on a rotating basis moving forward).
This year’s Hurst is fortunate to benefit from the campaign undertaken by the Society, as well as the invaluable support of the Society’s Hurst Committee, co-chaired by Bob Gordon and Sally Gordon, and the Hurst Selection Committee for 2023, chaired by Tom McSweeney. The Hurst will be held in Madison, Wisconsin from June 18 – 30, with convenors Michelle McKinley and Sally Gordon. They share the Stanley Katz Distinguished Convenors Fellowship.
Ray Solomon and David Tanenhaus have now distributed named fellowships to our 2023 Hurst fellows:
- Michael McGovern: Mary Frances Berry Fellowship
- Doris Morgan Rueda: Hendrik Hartog/Princeton University Fellowship
- Saumyashree Ghosh: Morton Horwitz Fellowship
- Dilyara Agisheva: Hurst Alumni Fellowship
- Linda Kinstler: Charles McCurdy/UVA Law School Fellowship
- Evelyn Atkinson: Robert Gordon/Stanford Law School
- Yukako Otori: Harry Scheiber Fellowship
- Jilene Chua: Rebecca Scott/University of Michigan Law School Fellowship
- Ari Schriber: William E. Nelson Fellowship
- Maham K. Theisen: Reva Seigel/Yale Law School Fellowship
- Charlotte Whatley: David Seipp Fellowship in English Legal History
- David Korostyshevsky: Lawrence Friedman/Stanford Law School Fellowship
To give just one example of how much these fellowships mean to the early career scholars who received them, we quote Michael McGovern who wrote to thank us for the 2023 Mary Frances Berry Fellowship: “Prof. Berry is one of the figures who is both a primary and secondary source in my dissertation, and taught one of my advisors legal history back in his grad school days at Penn. What an inspiration.”
The campaign to complete funding for the Hurst fellowships continues. In 2022, the ASLH began a parallel campaign to create endowed fellowships for the Student Research Colloquium (SRC). To contribute to the Hurst or SRC fellowships, go to ASLH Giving and select the named fellowship from the dropdown menu, or contact ASLH President Michael Willrich.