Laura Edwards

Laura F. Edwards is the Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty and Professor of History at Princeton University. Her research as a legal historian focuses on the nineteenth-century United States, examining legal culture, governance, gender, sexuality, citizenship, constitutional history, social history, material culture, political history, labor history, consumer history, cultural history, slavery, and African American history. Edwards earned a B.A. in American Culture from Northwestern University in 1985, an M.A. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1987, and a Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1991.

Prior to Princeton, where she joined in 2021, Edwards was Peabody Family Professor of History and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University from 2014 to 2020, Professor of History at Duke from 2005 to 2014, and Associate Professor at Duke from 2001 to 2005. She also served as Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles from 2000 to 2001 and Assistant Professor there from 1997 to 2000, as well as Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Florida from 1993 to 1997. Her major publications include Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Oxford University Press, 2022), A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction: A Nation of Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2015), The People and Their Peace: Legal Culture and the Transformation of Inequality in the Post-Revolutionary South (University of North Carolina Press, 2009), Scarlett Doesn't Live Here Anymore: Southern Women in the Civil War Era (University of Illinois Press, 2000), and Gendered Strife and Confusion: The Political Culture of Reconstruction (University of Illinois Press, 1997). Edwards has received the Society for the History of the Early Republic Best Book Prize, the American Society for Legal History John Philip Reid Book Award, and the Organization of American Historians Merle Curti Social History Award for Only the Clothes on Her Back; the American Historical Association Littleton-Griswold Prize in U.S. Law and Society and the Southern Historical Association Charles Sydnor Prize for The People and Their Peace; Choice Outstanding Academic Title awards for A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction and Gendered Strife and Confusion; and other honors including the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring from Duke University. She has delivered the Brose Distinguished Lectures and Fleming Lectures in Southern History.

Professional Email: laura.edwards@princeton.edu