James D. Schmidt
Associate Professor
Fields of Study: United States–19th Century, Labor, Legal/Constitutional/Policy
E-mail: jschmidt@niu.edu
Phone: 815-753-6810
Office: Zulauf 605
Education: Ph.D., Rice University, 1992
Current Research: My primary research and teaching interests are in the legal, labor, and social history of the nineteenth-century United States. My current research concerns the legal history of childhood. An article on the legal evolution of children's work over the course of the nineteenth century appeared in Law and History Review in 2006. I am writing a book titled Torn to Pieces: Childhood, Industrial Violence, and Law in the Industrializing U.S. South. My first book, Free to Work: Labor Law, Emancipation, and Reconstruction, 1815-1880 (1998), explored the effects of antebellum labor and social welfare policy on the outcome of emancipation and the development of a capitalist labor market.
Major/Recent Publications:
Courses Taught:
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