May 30 2022
Introducing the OSI 2022 Faculty: Bryan Wagner
We are happy to announce Bryan Wagner as a member of the OSI 2022 faculty! Bryan is Professor in the English Department and American Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on African American expression in the context of slavery and its aftermath, and he has specific interests in legal history, vernacular culture, urban studies, and digital humanities. Bryan will convene a workshop with Ravit Reichman on questions of Property, Law and Literature.
He is Principal Investigator for two multidisciplinary research projects in the digital humanities: Louisiana Slave Conspiracies (lsc.berkeley.edu), a documentary archive of trial manuscripts related to slave conspiracies organized at the Pointe Coupée Post in the Spanish territory of Louisiana in 1791 and 1795; and Tremé 1908, which tells the story of a year in the everyday life of an extraordinary neighhorhood that was a crucible for civil rights activism, cultural fusion, and musical innovation.
He is currently writing a book, The People’s Court: Law and Performance from Slavery to the Civil Rights Movement, that reconstructs a period-bound demotic tradition in folklore, music, popular theater, and vaudeville comedy based in the process and procedures of the minor judiciary.
