Donna Dennis

Professor Dennis received a B.A. from Yale College, where she graduated summa cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She also holds a masters degree in history from Yale University and a J.D. from Yale Law School. In 2005, Professor Dennis received a Ph.D. in history from Princeton University, where she taught American legal history and was awarded a Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities. Before joining the Rutgers faculty, Professor Dennis practiced law in New York at Debevoise & Plimpton; with the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York Attorney General’s Office; and as a partner at Richard Spears Kibbe & Orbe, where she specialized in corporate governance, internal investigations, and securities enforcement matters.

Professor Dennis’s first book, Licentious Gotham: Erotic Publishing and Its Prosecution in Nineteenth Century New York (Harvard University Press 2009), explores the origins of obscenity regulation and the “indecent” publishing trade in 19th-century New York City. In addition, she has published articles, book chapters, and book reviews in the areas of legal history; corporate and securities law; and law, gender, and sexuality. She has been an invited speaker at the Yale Legal History Forum and the UCLA Legal History Workshop and has presented papers to the American Society for Legal History, the American Studies Association, and the Law and Society Association, among others.