Ariela Gross, whose research and writing focus on race and slavery in the United States, teaches Contracts, History of American Law, and Race and Gender in the Law.

Professor Gross is the author of What Blood Won’t Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America, which has won several awards, including the 2009 J. Willard Hurst Prize for the best book in sociolegal history from the Law and Society Association; the 2009 Lillian Smith Book Award for the best book on the South from the Southern Regional Council; and the American Political Association's prize for the best book on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics. Gross also is the author of Double Character: Slavery and Mastery in the Antebellum Southern Courtroom (Princeton University Press, 2000; in paperback by University of Georgia Press, 2006) and numerous law review articles and book chapters. She is the co-author of several history textbooks, including America Past & Present (Pearson Longman Pub., 8th ed. 2008).

Professor Gross received her B.A. from Harvard University, her J.D. from Stanford Law School, and her Ph.D. in history from Stanford University. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Frederick J. Burkhardt Fellowship of the American Council of Learned Societies, and an NEH Huntington Library Long-Term Fellowship to support her research for What Blood Won’t Tell.  In 2010, she was appointed a Distinguished Lecturer by the Organization of American Historians.  She joined the USC Law faculty in 1996.

Books

• America Past & Present, and The American Story, 9th ed., (with Robert Divine, William Brand, Timothy Breen, George Fredrickson, and Hal Williams) (Pearson, Longman Publishers, 2010). - (www)
• What Blood Won’t Tell: Racial Identity on Trial in America (Harvard Univ. Press, 2008). - (www)
• American Stories, 1st. ed., (with William Brand, Timothy Breen, and Hal Williams) (Pearson, Longman Publishers, 2008). - (www)
• Double Character: Slavery and Mastery in the Antebellum Southern Courtroom (Princeton University Press, 2000; ppb. Univ. of Ga. Press, 2006). - (www)

Articles and Book Chapters

• "All Born to Freedom? Comparing the Law and Politics of Race and the Memory of Slavery in the U.S. and France Today," 21 S. Cal. Interdis. L. J. 523 (2012). - (Hein)
• "Teaching Humanities Softly: Bringing A Critical Approach to the First-Year Contracts Class Through Trial and Error" (2012). - (www)
• "From the Streets to the Courts: Doing Grassroots Legal History of the Civil Rights Era," 90 Tex. L. Rev. 1233 (2012). - (www)
• "Race, Law and Comparative History," 29 Law & History Review 459 (2011). - (www)
• "Comparative Studies of Law, Slavery, and Race in the Americas," 6 Annual Review of Law & Soc. Sci. 469 (2010) (with Alejandro de la Fuente).
• Reply to USC Law Review's Symposium: "What We Do When "Blood Won't Tell," 83 University of Southern California Law Review 495 (2010). - (PDF)
• “The Constitution of History and Memory,” in Austin Sarat, ed., Companion to Law and the Humanities (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2009). - (SSRN) - (bepress)
• “When Is The Time of Slavery? The History of Slavery in Contemporary Legal and Political Argument,” 96 Calif. L. Rev. 283 (2008). - (Hein)
• “Slavery, Antislavery, and the Coming of the Civil War,” in The Cambridge History of Law in America (Christopher Tomlins and Michael Grossberg, eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2008). - (SSRN)
• “History, Race, and Prediction: Review Symposium of Bernard Harcourt, Against Prediction,” 33 Law & Social Inquiry 233 (2008).
• "'Of Portuguese Origin:' Litigating Identity and Citizenship among The 'Little Races' in Nineteenth Century America," 25 Law & History Review 467 (2007). - (Hein)
• “'The Caucasian Cloak:' Mexican Americans and The Politics of Whiteness in The Twentieth Century Southwest,” 95 Georgetown L. J. 337 (2007). - (Hein)
• "Reflections on Law, Culture, and Slavery," in Slavery and the American South (Winthrop D. Jordan, ed., Univ. of Mississippi Press, 2003).
• “Texas Mexicans and The Politics of Whiteness,” 21 Law & History Rev. 195 (Spring 2003). - (Hein)
• "Beyond Black and White: Cultural Approaches to Race and Slavery," 101 Columbia Law Review 640 (2001). - (Hein)
• "The Law and The Culture of Slavery: Natchez, Mississippi" in Local Matters: Race, Crime and Justice in the Nineteenth-Century South (Donald Nieman & Christopher Waldrep, eds., Univ. of Georgia Press, 2001).
• Book Review: White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South, by Martha Hodes. 18 Law and History Review 686-88 (Fall 2000).
• "The Contraction of Freedom," review of From Bondage to Contract, by Amy Dru Stanley. Reviews in American History 28 (2000) 255-62.
• "Litigating Whiteness: Trials of Racial Determination in the Nineteenth-Century South," 108 Yale Law Journal 109 (1998) (excerpted in Kevin R. Johnson, ed., Mixed Race America and the Law: A Reader (NYU Press, 2003). - (Hein)
• Book Review: Slave Laws in Virginia, by Philip Schwarz. Amer. J. of Legal History 42:97-98 (1998).
• "'Like Master, Like Man': Constructing Whiteness in the Commercial Law of Slavery, 1800-1861," in Symposium: Bondage, Freedom and the Constitution, 18 Cardozo Law Review 263 (1996). - (Hein)
• "Pandora's Box: Slave Character on Trial in the Antebellum Deep South," 7 Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 267 (Summer, 1995); reprinted in Slavery and the Law 291 (Paul Finkelman, ed., Madison House, 1997). - (Hein)

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