Peter Karsten
Peter Karsten is a professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, with joint appointments in the sociology department and the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. He is the author of the prizewinning The Naval Aristocracy: The Golden Age of Annapolis and the Emergence of Modern American Navalism (1972); Law, Soldiers, and Combat (1978); Heart versus Head: Judge-Made Law in Nineteenth-Century America (1997); the prizewinning Between Law and Custom: "High" and "Low" Legal Cultures in the Lands of the British Diaspora, 1600–1900 (2003); and The Magic Mirror: Law in American History (2nd edition, 2009), among other books. He is also editor-in-chief of the prizewinning Encyclopedia of War and American Society (3 volumes, 2005). He has held visiting chairs at University College Dublin, Augsburg Universitat, and The Citadel.
Lectures
- Understanding the World of Combat Infantrymen in Europe during World War II: Surveys, Recollections, and the Critical Role of War Correspondents, Photographers, and Cartoonists
- The Four "Cousins-in-Law" and How They Are Related: Substantive Due Process and State-Based Prohibition; Slavery in the Federal Territory; Mormon Statehood; and Public School Prayer and Bible Reading *
- Revisiting the Critiques of Justices who Upheld the Fugitive Slave Acts *
- Celtic Interactions with Indigenous People in the British Empire
- The Cuban Missile Crisis, a Very Close Call *
- Crises of Conscience: Rethinking the Moral Dilemmas Faced by U.S. Jurists and Military Officers in the Nineteenth Century
- The Myriad of Consequences of U.S. Wars *
Lectures marked with a * are offered as part of the OAH's initiative, Historians' Perspectives on the Rise of Donald Trump.
