Julie Stone Peters

Julie Stone Peters

Research Interests

Biography

Professor Peters (BA Yale, PhD Princeton, JD Columbia) specializes in a number of fields that traverse traditional period divisions: law and humanities; drama, theatre, and performance; and film and comparative media. Her most recent book is Law as Performance: Theatricality, Spectatorship, and the Making of Law in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Europe (Oxford University Press, 2022). Previous publications include Theatre of the Book: Print, Text, and Performance in Europe 1480-1880 (Oxford University Press, 2000) (winner of the ACLA's Harry Levin Prize, English Association's Beatrice White Award, and honorable mention from ASTR for the best book in theatre history), Women's Rights, Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives (co-edited, Routledge, 1995), Congreve, the Drama, and the Printed Word (Stanford UP, 1990), and numerous articles on comparative media, the history of drama and performance, and the cultural history of law. She has taught at Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Siena, and been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Fulbright Foundation, American Philosophical Society, American Council of Learned Societies, Humboldt Foundation, and the Harvard University and Folger Libraries. At Columbia, she currently serves as Co-Chair of the Theatre Ph.D. Program, has served as Associate Chair of the English Department, and was the Founding Director of the Columbia College Human Rights Program. She is currently working on a book on the ethics and politics of law as media spectacle (policing, trials, and punishment).

Law as Performance: Theatricality, Spectatorship, and the Making of Law in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Europe (Oxford University Press, 2022).
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/law-as-performance-9780192898494?cc=us&lang=en

Mapping Law and Performance: Reflections on the Dilemmas of an Interdisciplinary Conjunction: https://www-oxfordhandbooks-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190695620.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190695620-e-42

A Short History of Scaffold Tragedy c. 1650-1800: How a Classic Trope Salvaged the Spectacle of Punishment in the Age of Sympathy

Staging the Last Judgment in the Trial of Charles I: https://doi.org/10.1525/rep.2018.143.1.1

Penitentiary Performances: Spectators, Affecting Scenes, and Terrible Apparitions in the Nineteenth-Century Model Prison" https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/stable/j.ctv346v7v.5?refreqid=excelsior%3Aa8b84a309f950e2272a603224b5fcfde&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents.

Law as Performance: Historical Interpretation, Objects, Lexicons, and Other Methodological Problems: https://oxford-universitypressscholarship-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190456368.001.0001/acprof-9780190456368-chapter-12

Theatrocracy Unwired: Legal Performance in the Modern Mediasphere: https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/doi/full/10.1080/1535685X.2014.888200

Drama, Primitive Ritual, Ethnographic Spectacle: Genealogies of World Performance (ca. 1890-1910): https://read.dukeupress.edu/modern-language-quarterly/article-abstract/70/1/67/19623/Drama-Primitive-Ritual-Ethnographic-Spectacle?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Legal Performance Good and Bad: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1743872108091473

Jane Harrison and the Savage Dionysus: Archaeological Voyages, Ritual Origins, Anthropology, and the Modern Theatre: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/242465

Performing Obscene Modernism: Theatrical Censorship and the Making of Modern Drama: https://link-springer-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/chapter/10.1057%2F9780230289086_12

Theatricality, Legalism, and the Scenography of Suffering in the Trial of Warren Hastings and Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s Pizarro: https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/stable/10.1525/lal.2006.18.1.15?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

A ‘Bridge over Chaos’: De Jure Belli, Paradise Lost, Terror, Sovereignty, Globalism, and the Modern Law of Nations: https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/stable/4122558?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

‘Literature,’ the ‘Rights of Man,’ and Narratives of Atrocity: Historical Backgrounds to the Culture of Testimony: https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1304&context=yjlh

Law, Literature, and the Vanishing Real: On the Future of an Interdisciplinary Illusion: https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/stable/25486170?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

Theatre of the Book 1480-1880 Print, Text and Performance in Europe, Julie Peters

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/theatre-of-the-book-1480-1880-9780199262168?cc=us&lang=en&

Women’s Rights, Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives, Ed. Julie Peters and Andrea Wolper

https://www-taylorfrancis-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/books/e/9781315656571