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Colin Dayan

Colin Dayan is Robert Penn Warren Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University. Her books include The Law Is a White DogThe Story of Cruel and Unusual, and Haiti, History, and the Gods.

Articles

Long before Joe Arpaio became a household name, he was busy reinventing chain gangs, criminalizing detainees, and persecuting anyone who crossed his path. A series of exclusive photos from 1995 takes us back.

Colin Dayan

Undocumented immigrants face horrible conditions in U.S. detention, with little legal recourse.

Colin Dayan

On the cruelties the South doles out to animals, children, and black folks.

Colin Dayan
On Lori Gruen's Entangled Empathy
Colin Dayan
The Church has always had a vexed, somewhat aggrieved relation to dogs and their status as things to be blessed or sanctified.
Colin Dayan

On Gregory Berns's How Dogs Love Us.

Colin Dayan

Jonathan Katz has written the book about the Haitian earthquake. How does he contextualize the tragedy in the country's history?

Colin Dayan

Talking about Gaza is like talking about God. We face the ineffable. We cannot talk about what we see. 

Colin Dayan

He taught us all how to read carefully, argue passionately, and write responsibly.

Colin Dayan
Your pit bull is too violent to live—even if it isn’t.
Colin Dayan

I went back to Haiti on August 15, a year and a half after the earthquake. The place where I had lived on and off since the summer of 1970 was unrecognizable. But the politics were familiar.

Colin Dayan

Serge Avedikian’s Barking Island.

Colin Dayan

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