Following the Supreme Court’s decision in US v Rahimi upholding a law banning domestic abusers from accessing firearms, Jennifer Tucker provided analysis of the decision and its impact on CNN. The 8-1 ruling in the case, which comes after the Court’s 2022 Bruen decision upended the legal landscape surrounding firearms, Read more…
This seminar, developed in collaboration with visiting guest instructor Glenn LaVertu (Parsons), combines readings, discussion, archival research, storyboarding, project-based learning, legal analysis, and filmmaking in presenting new takes on an old genre: Westerns. We will read and watch Westerns alongside study of the development of the American legal system, considering Read more…
This project-based course provides a unique cross-disciplinary opportunity to study important historical questions surrounding firearms. Combining quantitative methodology in data science with qualitative research methods in history, students will answer questions they are passionate about based on existing datasets. Students will read, discuss, and write responses to the latest historical Read more…
Writing in CNN Opinion, Jennifer Tucker reflects on the conviction in criminal court of a mother, Jennifer Crumbley, charged with manslaughter in connection with the mass shooting committed by her teenage son at an Oxford, Michigan high school. This marks the first time in U.S. history that a parent has Read more…
Amidst the recent resignation of National Rifle Association (NRA) executive vice president and CEO Wayne LaPierre, Jennifer Tucker has written an op-ed in CNN exploring the long-time leader’s personal legacy and the future of the NRA. LaPierre resigned just ahead of the start of a major trial that alleges self-dealing and Read more…
“Gundamentalism,” Modern American History (May 16, 2023), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1017/mah.2023.12 Firearms and ballistics are at the center of public debate in the United States today. They are technologies that are associated both with danger (in the form of gun violence) and safety (in the form of claims that firearms offer personal protection). This Read more…
Jennifer Tucker was recently interviewed on the Brady podcast in an episode titled, “The Rising Lethality of the Second Amendment.” Tucker describes her early introduction to guns in popular culture and how she came to study guns as a historian, leading to the establishment of the Center for the Study Read more…
Miller, D.H. and J. Tucker, “Common Use, Lineage, and Lethality,” UC Davis Law Review 55/5 (2022), 101–119. Abstract: Sorely missing from the current debate is a shared vocabulary for what the public policy and the constitutional doctrine is aiming to achieve. Terms like “common use,” “dangerous and unusual,” “lineal descendants” Read more…
““Over London at Night”: Gasworks, Ballooning, and the Visual Gas Field,” British Art Studies, Issue 22 (2022). This article explores some of the historical forces through which the Thames became a key site where gas manufacture and ballooning came together to provide new forms of experience and spectacle; and economic Read more…
Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT): Through the generosity of a Mellon Foundation “Humanities for All Times” award, Wesleyan is able to embark on a new project that explores – from interdisciplinary perspectives – the past and contemporary resonances of slavery, race, and industrialization in New England, through innovative curricula, engagement with Read more…
