HESBURGH LECTURE SERIES 2012 Program - Alumni Association ...

Linda Przybyszewski, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, History; Concurrent Professor, Law School
Biography
Linda Przybyszewski joined the History Department in 2005 and became a concurrent
associate professor in the Law School in 2010. Her specialties are the history of American
law and culture. The topics on which she teaches include crime, heredity, and insanity in
American history, the history of law and religion in the U.S., the gap between academic and
popular history, and the history of fashion and dress in the modern era. Her work in law has
led to invitations to lecture at the U.S. Supreme Court and the Ohio Supreme Court. An
accomplished dressmaker, Przybyszewski served as a judge of the annual Garment Challenge
sponsored by the Association of Sewing and Design Professionals in 2009. She can tell you
several ways in which the history of law and dress overlap.
Przybyszewski’s most recent publication is Religion and Morality in the Constitutional Order,
one of the American Historical Association’s new essays on American Constitutional History.
In 1999, she published The Republic According to John Marshall Harlan, a biography of the first Justice Harlan to serve on the U.S.
Supreme Court. Przybyszewski also edited his wife’s memoirs, Some Memories of a Long Life, 1854-1911 for the Modern Library
in 2002 with support from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Przybyszewski earned her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1989 and
her B.A. from Northwestern University in 1984. Additionally, she has won several national fellowships.
Lectures
Categories
Law, Government, History,
Social Concerns
Don’t Know Much About History: Why Most Historians Don’t Read Popular History and
Most of the Populace Doesn’t Read Academic History
When you walk into your local Barnes and Noble, you don’t always find the books written by Notre Dame historians. Why is that?
Writing style is an issue, but more important, most scholars don’t tend to write the five most popular kinds of history. What are
they and why don’t we?
Who Won the Bible War? The Unexpected Origins of Religious Liberty in Modern America
In 1873, in a historic first, the Ohio Supreme Court allowed the city of Cincinnati to end Bible reading in its public schools. The
controversy had riveted the eyes of the nation. Now, religion has lost. Or has it? The real story reveals the power of Christianity to
influence the shape of religious liberty itself.
Why Are We a Nation of Slobs? The Demise of the Dress Doctors
Early in the 20th century, Americans dressed with more care. They had learned how to from the “dress doctors,” the home
economists who wrote textbooks on dress, and who worked in practically every American high school, until revolutions in style,
curriculum, and culture destroyed their influence. The results have not been pretty.
The Hesburgh Lecture Series, 2012 Program 93