Daria Reaven is an interdisciplinary scholar of the carceral state and legal history. Informed by seven years work as a criminal defense investigator on death penalty appellate cases, her research traces mechanisms of legal mercy in Virginia—from slavery-era legal reforms to Richmond’s contemporary criminal courtrooms—to show how practices of clemency and absolution consolidate racialized forms of state power. Daria completed her PhD in American Studies at New York University and her MSc from SOAS. Her scholarship and teaching at Barnard will contribute to work on legal thought, culture, and the history of punishment in the American south.