Call For Proposals: Feminist Food Studies

FEMINIST FOOD STUDIES: EXPLORING INTERSECTIONALITY

Canadian Scholars is considering publishing a volume that will explore the emergent area of feminist food studies, and food and eating through a feminist, intersectional framework. The editors seek chapter proposals that examine feminist epistemologies, methodologies and pedagogies, in addition to empirical work that interrogates the complex relationships between production, consumption, and embodiment as these are shaped by temporal, socio-historical contexts, which produce overlapping marginal and privileged social identities. Possible areas for submission include: Intersectionality as a methodological approach or as method in food studies Theorizing food and intersectionality through social identities such as race, ethnicity, gender, social class, age, sexualities, body size, able-bodiedness, nationality Feminist Intersectional pedagogies in food studies Food and femininities / masculinities Embodiment including fat studies, or critical ‘obesity’ studies Health as an embodied social and food practices Ecofeminist perspectives and critical animal studies Indigenous food systems and relationships Material feminism Food systems Food security and food sovereignty Women and agriculture / farming The co-editors B. Parker, J. Brady, E. Power and S. Belyea welcome individual and co-authored proposals and chapters from both established and emerging scholars, including graduate students. Expected length of abstract: 200-250 words. Deadline: February 28, 2017. Expected length of final chapter: 8000 words. Proposed deadline for full chapters: June 30, 2017. Please submit chapter proposals to: feministfoodstudies@gmail.com See also the posting here.

A New Biography of Blanche of Castile From Lindy Grant @yalepress

Lindy Grant, University of Reading, has published Blanche of Castile, Queen of France (Yale University Press, 2017). Here is a description of the book's contents.

This is the first modern scholarly biography of Blanche of Castile, whose identity has until now been subsumed in that of her son, the saintly Louis IX. A central figure in the politics of medieval Europe, Blanche was a sophisticated patron of religion and culture. Through Lindy Grant’s engaging account, based on a close analysis of Blanche’s household accounts and of the social and religious networks on which her power and agency depended, Blanche is revealed as a vibrant and intellectually questioning personality.

 

ICYMI: James Q. Whitman, The Origins of Reasonable Doubt (Yale University Press, 2008)

ICYMI: James Q. Whitman, The Origins of Reasonable Doubt: Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial (Yale University Press, 2008).

To be convicted of a crime in the United States, a person must be proven guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But what is reasonable doubt? Even sophisticated legal experts find this fundamental doctrine difficult to explain. In this accessible book, James Q. Whitman digs deep into the history of the law and discovers that we have lost sight of the original purpose of “reasonable doubt.” It was not originally a legal rule at all, he shows, but a theological one. The rule as we understand it today is intended to protect the accused. But Whitman traces its history back through centuries of Christian theology and common-law history to reveal that the original concern was to protect the souls of jurors. In Christian tradition, a person who experienced doubt yet convicted an innocent defendant was guilty of a mortal sin. Jurors fearful for their own souls were reassured that they were safe, as long as their doubts were not “reasonable.” Today, the old rule of reasonable doubt survives, but it has been turned to different purposes. The result is confusion for jurors, and a serious moral challenge for our system of justice.

 

Roger Luckhurst on The Cultural History of Zombies @TheProfRog @ReaktionBooks @

ICYMI:

Roger Luckhurst, Birkbeck College, University of London, Zombies: A Cultural History (Reaktion Books, dist. University of Chicago, 2016).


Here is a description of the book's contents.

Add a gurgling moan with the sound of dragging feet and a smell of decay and what do you get? Better not find out. The zombie has roamed with dead-eyed menace from its beginnings in obscure folklore and superstition to global status today, the star of films such as 28 Days Later, World War Z, and the outrageously successful comic book, TV series, and video game—The Walking Dead. In this brain-gripping history, Roger Luckhurst traces the permutations of the zombie through our culture and imaginations, examining the undead’s ability to remain defiantly alive.

Luckhurst follows a trail that leads from the nineteenth-century Caribbean, through American pulp fiction of the 1920s, to the middle of the twentieth century, when zombies swarmed comic books and movie screens. From there he follows the zombie around the world, tracing the vectors of its infectious global spread from France to Australia, Brazil to Japan. Stitching together materials from anthropology, folklore, travel writings, colonial histories, popular literature and cinema, medical history, and cultural theory, Zombies is the definitive short introduction to these restless pulp monsters. 

Yale University Law School Library's Exhibit on Dickens, Christmas, and Law @yalelawlibrary

Yale University Law School's Library presented a special exhibit for the holidays: Charles Dickens as Herald of Christmas and Victorian Legal Historian. Take a look here.

Gillespie's The Causes of War, Volume II, Available From Hart Publishing @hartpublishing

ICYMI: Alexander Gillespie, The Causes of War (Hart Publishing). Volume I: 3000 BCE to 1000 CE (2013). Here is a description of the book's contents.

This is the first volume of a projected four-volume series charting the causes of war from 3000 BCE to the present day, written by a leading international lawyer, and using as its principal materials the documentary history of international law largely in the form of treaties and the negotiations which led up to them. These volumes seek to show why millions of people, over thousands of years, slayed each other. In departing from the various theories put forward by historians, anthropologists and psychologists, Gillespie offers a different taxonomy of the causes of war, focusing on the broader settings of politics, religion, migrations and empire-building. These four contexts were dominant and often overlapping justifications for the first four thousand years of human civilisation, for which written records exist.

Volume II: 1000 CE to 1400 CE will be published on January 12.

British Legal History Conference Takes Place at UCL, July 5-8, 2017

The British Legal History Conference will take place from July 5, 2017 to July 8, 2017 at University College, London, Faculty of Law. The theme is "Networks and Connections." More information, including the program, here.

Lucy Jewel Looks At Pop Culture Women Lawyers and Their Wardrobes @ljewel @masslw @UTKLaw

Lucy Jewel, University of Tennessee School of Law, examines how pop culture women lawyers dress, in an essay for Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. Read Women in Popular Culture: Dressing For Success here. 

A New Journal For the Study of Art and Law @ArtMarketStuds

An interesting new journal devoted to art and law: The Santander Art & Culture Law Review.  The journal is open access. Current CFP here.

Via @ArtMarketStuds.

Call For Papers: Shakespeare and the Pedagogies of Justice @ANZAMEMS

 Via @BauerStefan

Shakespeare and the Pedagogies of Justice – Call For Papers

Shakespeare and the Pedagogies of Justice

Shakespeare scholars regularly encounter social justice issues in the material that we study and teach. Most often in the classroom our engagement with such issues takes the form of thematic identification and critical parsing. Yet we struggle to form more direct, material connections between coursework and social justice work. This book is for professors of early modern literature who want to heighten the intellectual impact of their courses by thoughtfully using their classrooms as laboratories for social formation and action. Much as Paolo Freire sought to reformat the relationship between teachers and students through his “pedagogy of the oppressed,” we are seeking productive ways of reformatting the relationship between students and this challenging material–ways that move them and us toward social action. We invite chapters that describe and model the doing of social justice work with and through early modern texts, and that claim the academic (not merely social) benefits of integrating social justice work into courses. To rethink the syntax, we might say we are interested in how social action can grow out of the pedagogical tools we employ in the early modern classroom. Bad pedagogy can produce quietism, but we hope to trace some ways in which an alive classroom can spark social change. To that end, we are especially interested in essays that do not approach teaching a single text so much as introduce methodologies, curricula, and assignments that integrate early modern texts with doing social justice.

Topics may include:

• Social justice topics courses
• Service learning
• Community engagement
• Evidence and truth in a post-truth world
• Teaching in the anthropocene
• Inclusive pedagogies
• Students as knowledge producers
• Teaching at an HBC, women’s college, native college, community college
• The global Renaissance
• Teaching performance as social justice
• The scholarly implications of social justice pedagogy
• Multiple and competing “Renaissance world pictures”
• Implications of post-modern ontologies on pedagogy
• The classroom as a community, laboratory, incubator, and change agentFor consideration please send a chapter abstract (500-1000 words), bio (~250 words) and CV (<4 abstracts="" deadline="" for="" is="" nbsp="" pp="" strong="" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">27 January, 2017

 completed chapters expected by 15 December, 2017.  Please send full set of materials to both Hillary Eklund, Loyola University New Orleans hceklund@loyno.edu and Wendy Beth Hyman, Oberlin College whyman@oberlin.edu.

This entry was posted in cfp on 5 January 2017.

"Captain! There's a Warp Core Meltdown!" @scifipolicy

Have you ever wondered why those Star Trek spaceships seem to have so many malfunctions? This subreddit thread explores that question and proposes some answers, including that aliens just refuse to work in Federation engineering because Federation technology is, well, bad, and that the way human Federation folks approach problems is well, weird. as in, not scientific. Sort of seat of the pants, in fact. (Of course that adds to the drama, but if your own species tends toward the logical, it can be frightening). Source here, more commentary here. Via @scifipolicy.

It does pose the question, however: Doesn't Starfleet have, oh, I don't know, regulations that require inspection of starships and contracts that require build of those ships to certain specifications, and research into technology, and things like that? I smell a law review article.

Alan Jacobs on the Murder Mystery and the Search for Justice

Alan Jacobs on the Inspector Morse television series, its spinoffs, and "Murder in Paradise," from The American Conservative. Via @allenmendenhall.

Call For Applications, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law and School of English, University of Hong Kong @HKUniversity

Via Marco Wan, University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law, Editor, Law & Literature:

Applications are invited for a joint appointment as tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Law of the Faculty of Law and the School of English of the Faculty of Arts, to commence on September 1, 2017 or as soon as possible thereafter, on a three-year fixed-term basis, with the possibility of renewal, and with consideration for tenure before the expiry of a second three-year fixed-term contract. More information about the position is available at the University of Hong Kong website here.

Crime Novels To Enrich Your Vocabulary @guardian

For The Guardian, Max Décharné, musician (Gallon Drunk, The Flaming Stars) and author (the forthcoming Vulgar Tongues: An Alternative History of English Slang) offers this list of the "ten best slangy crime novels," which includes not simply some well known titles (Dorothy Sayers's Murder Must Advertise, Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely, and Chester Himes's If He Hollers Let Him Go) and some semi-well known titles (Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest), but some unknown tomes (Cathi Unsworth's Weirdo and James Curtis's The Gilt Kid). Lots of suggestions for your mystery/crime thriller bookshelf.

Lambert on Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 2017) @SidneySussex @OxUniPress

Tom Lambert, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, is publishing Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 2017). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England explores English legal culture and practice across the Anglo-Saxon period, beginning with the essentially pre-Christian laws enshrined in writing by King Æthelberht of Kent in c. 600 and working forward to the Norman Conquest of 1066. It attempts to escape the traditional retrospective assumptions of legal history, focused on the late twelfth-century Common Law, and to establish a new interpretative framework for the subject, more sensitive to contemporary cultural assumptions and practical realities. The focus of the volume is on the maintenance of order: what constituted good order; what forms of wrongdoing were threatening to it; what roles kings, lords, communities, and individuals were expected to play in maintaining it; and how that worked in practice. Its core argument is that the Anglo-Saxons had a coherent, stable, and enduring legal order that lacks modern analogies: it was neither state-like nor stateless, and needs to be understood on its own terms rather than as a variant or hybrid of these models. Tom Lambert elucidates a distinctively early medieval understanding of the tension between the interests of individuals and communities, and a vision of how that tension ought to be managed that, strikingly, treats strongly libertarian and communitarian features as complementary. Potentially violent, honour-focused feuding was an integral aspect of legitimate legal practice throughout the period, but so too was fearsome punishment for forms of wrongdoing judged socially threatening. Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England charts the development of kings' involvement in law, in terms both of their authority to legislate and their ability to influence local practice, presenting a picture of increasingly ambitious and effective royal legal innovation that relied more on the cooperation of local communal assemblies than kings' sparse and patchy network of administrative officials.

Via @maksdelmar. 

Killing Fields Focuses On Louisiana Cold Case @KillingFieldsTV @Discovery @hulu

Discovery's series Killing Fields focuses on the unsolved 1997 murder of Eugenie Boisfontaine. The series returns January 3, 2017.   The remains of Ms. Boisfontaine, an LSU graduate student, were found in a bayou in Iberville Parish. Here's more about this very sad case from a 2004 article in LSUNow.

One suspect in the case, convicted serial killer Derrick Todd Lee, died in 2016.

The Discovery series is also available via Hulu.

Mohr @ucddublin on The Irish Question and the Evolution of British Imperial Law, 1916-1922

Thomas Mohr, Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin, has published The Irish Question and the Evolution of British Imperial Law, 1916-1922 as UCD Working Papers in Law, Criminology & Socio-Legal Studies Research Paper No. 12. Here is the abstract.

By the early twentieth century Dominion status seemed ideally suited as the answer to the perennial ‘Irish question’. It offered Ireland a generous measure of autonomy while maintaining the territorial integrity of the British Empire. Nevertheless, the prospect of granting Dominion status to Ireland remained little more than a fantasy on the eve of the outbreak of the First World War. This reality was altered by two parallel historical developments. The first of these was the 1916 Easter rising that killed any possibility of an effective home rule settlement for the entire island of Ireland. The second was a rapid acceleration in the evolution of the self-governing Dominions of the Empire towards greater autonomy in the constitutional sphere. In the aftermath of the First World War these two developments came together in the signing of the 1921 Treaty that permitted the Irish Free State to emerge with the status of a self-governing Dominion, the same constitutional status held by Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. This article will examine the legal and constitutional developments that took place between 1914 and 1922 that removed the possibility of an ‘Irish Dominion’ from the realms of fantasy and allowed it to play a vital role in the emergence of the self-governing Irish state. It also examines the important role of Hessel Duncan Hall’s book The British Commonwealth of Nations (1920) in influencing this process.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

AALS Law and Film Selections At This Year's Meeting @TheAALS @MacheteCine

The two AALS Law & Film selections at this year's meeting in San Francisco are Anatomy of a Murder, Tuesday evening at 7 p.m.,and La Jaula de Oro, Thursday evening at 6:30. I will moderate the discussion for Anatomy of a Murder, the classic courtroom drama about the quest for the truth behind an Army lieutenant's killing of the man he accuses of raping his wife.  Michael Olivas, Professor of Law, University of Houston Law Center, and a former AALS President, will moderate the discussion for La Jaula de Oro, a striking Mexican film about Central American undocumented immigrants and their dangerous journey to the United States. Special guest for the Thursday night presentation is the film's producer, Luis Salinas. William S. Hein and Company is providing refreshments for both evenings.

Come find out why law and film matters!

Forthcoming From @routledgebooks: The Secret Origins of Comics Studies

Forthcoming from Routledge Press: The Secret Origins of Comics Studies (Matthew Smith and Randy Duncan, eds., 2017). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

In The Secret Origins of Comics Studies, today’s leading comics scholars turn back a page to reveal the founding figures dedicated to understanding comics art. Edited by comics scholars Matthew J. Smith and Randy Duncan, this collection provides an in-depth study of the individuals and institutions that have created and shaped the field of Comics Studies over the past seventy-five years. From Coulton Waugh to Wolfgang Fuchs, these influential historians, educators, and theorists produced the foundational work and built the institutions that inspired the recent surge in scholarly work in this dynamic, interdisciplinary field. Sometimes scorned, often underappreciated, these visionaries established a path followed by subsequent generations of scholars in literary studies, communication, art history, the social sciences, and more. Giving not only credit where credit is due, this volume both offers an authoritative account of the history of comics studies and also helps move the field forward by being a valuable resource for creating graduate student reading lists and the first stop for anyone writing a comics-related literature review.

Dick Wolf, NBCU, and Oxygen Discussing Crime-Themed Rebranding @NBCUniversal @oxygen

According to Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, Dick Wolf and NBCU are in talks with Oxygen to rebrand the network as all crime, all the time. Oxygen has already begun programming some law and order programming, which speaks to the popularity that other networks (Discovery, A&E) have recognized that these kinds of shows continue to have among U.S. viewers. Currently, Oxygen programs several "true crime" shows, such as "Snapped," "It Takes a Killer," and "Homicide For the Holidays."

Will Monroeville Become Maycomb?

Harper Lee's attorney, Tonja Sheets, wants to turn Monroeville, Alabama, Ms. Lee's home town, into even more of a tourist attraction by creating a sort of "To Kill a Mockingbird Trail" there, with replicas of some of the buildings in the novel and establishment of a new museum in a converted bank building. More here from Smithsonian.com.

University of Kent Law School @UniKent Announces New LLM in Law and the Humanities

From the mailbox, news of a new LLM in Law and the Humanities:

The Kent LLM is a one-year program that offers a chance to study law from a critical perspective. The Law and the Humanities pathway is taught at Kent’s Canterbury campus, with two intensive modules in Paris. You can learn more about the pathway in the notice attached to this email, and at https://www.kent.ac.uk/law/postgraduate/taught/lawandhumanities.html. We also offer a LLM by research, with supervision available from a wide range of law and the humanities specialists. KLS is an exciting critical law school, with research centres such as the Centre for Critical Thought, the Centre for Critical International Law, and the Kent Interdisciplinary Centre for Spatial Studies, as well as research clusters like Social Critiques of Law and Clio (the Law and History group). KLS also hosts the Kent Summer School in Critical Theory, held each year in Paris. This exciting initiative draws graduate and early career researchers from around the world to work intensively for two weeks with leading scholars from across all disciplines. You can learn more at http://kssct.org. There are some LLM scholarships (for taught and research programmes) available both for UK/EU and overseas applicants. More information is available on the KLS website, at https://www.kent.ac.uk/law/postgraduate/taught/Taught_pg_funding.htmlhttps://www.kent.ac.uk/law/postgraduate/research/PGR_LLM_Scholarships.html We would be most grateful if you would forward this email, together with the attachment, to:

• Your academic networks

• Law students who may appreciate a master’s level entry to humanities and cultural approaches to law

• Students from other disciplines who are curious about law, ethics and justice

• Students who may enjoy the chance to study in the UK and Paris, and who are looking for a way to experience European life and culture whilst studying for a year.

 For administrative and application enquiries, please contact Kent Law School’s postgraduate office, klspgoffice@kent.ac.uk. For academic enquiries, please contact the Pathway Specialists, Maria Drakopoulou m.drakopoulou@kent.ac.uk or Connal Parsley c.parsley@kent.ac.uk. 

ICYMI: Lee on The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel

ICYMI:

Julia Sun-Joo Lee has published The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel (Oxford University Press, 2012). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

Conceived as a literary form to aggressively publicize the abolitionist cause in the United States, the African American slave narrative remains a powerful and illuminating demonstration of America's dark history. Yet the genre's impact extended far beyond the borders of the U.S. The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel investigates the shaping influence of writings by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and other former slaves on British fiction in the years between the Abolition Act and the Emancipation Proclamation. Julia Sun-Joo Lee argues that novelists such as Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Charles Dickens integrated into their works generic elements of the slave narrative-from the emphasis on literacy as a tool of liberation, to the teleological journey from slavery to freedom, to the ethics of resistance over submission. It contends that Victorian novelists used these tropes in an attempt to access the slave narrative's paradigm of resistance, illuminate the transnational dimension of slavery, and articulate Britain's role in the global community. Through a deft use of disparate sources, Lee reveals how the slave narrative becomes part of the textual network of the English novel, making visible how black literary, as well as economic, production contributed to British culture.

ICYMI: American Guy: Masculinity In American Law and Literature (OUP, 2014)

ICYMI: American Guy: Masculinity in American Law and Literature (Saul Levmore and Martha C. Nussbaum eds., Oxford University Press, 2014). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

American Guy examines American norms of masculinity and their role in the law, bringing a range of methodological and disciplinary perspectives to the intersection of American gender, legal, and literary issues. The collection opens with a set of papers investigating "American Guys" -- the heroic nonconformists and rugged individualists that populate much of American fiction. Diverse essays examine the manly men of Hemingway, Dreiser, and others, in their relation to the law, while also highlighting the underlying tensions that complicate this version of masculinity. A second set of papers examines "Outsiders" -- men on the periphery of the American Guys who proclaim a different way of being male. These essays take up counter-traditions of masculinity ranging from gay male culture to Philip Roth's portrait of the Jewish lawyer. American Guy, a follow-up to Subversion and Sympathy, edited by Alison L. LaCroix and Martha Nussbaum, aims at reinvigorating the law-and-literature movement through original, cross-disciplinary insights. It embraces a variety of voices from both within and outside the academy, including several contributions from prominent judges. These contributions are particularly significant, not only as features unique to the field, but also for the light they throw on the federal bench. In the face of a large body of work studying judicial conduct as a function of rigid commitment to ideology, American Guy shows a side of the judiciary that is imaginatively engaged, aware of cultural trends, and reflective about the wider world and the role of the of law in it.

Douma on How the First Ten Amendments Became the Bill of Rights

Michael Douma, Georgetown University, is publishing How the First Ten Amendments Became the Bill of Rights in the Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy (forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

The term “the Bill of Rights” used as a proper noun to refer specifically and exclusively to the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution was largely a result of civic education drives in the 1920s and 1930s. Many in the founding generation called for a bill rights to be attached to the Constitution, but they never called the first ten amendments “the Bill of Rights.” In the nineteenth century, these amendments had little power, and the bill of rights (usually not capitalized) was often thought to be an abstract set of principles, existing prior to and not coequal with the first ten amendments. Through a gradual linguistic evolution, driven by a need to define and apply political principles, Americans created “the Bill of Rights” and imbued it with iconic status. This occurred first in legal language in the 1890s, and spread into textbooks, before entering the vocabulary of contributors to newspapers. In the 1930s, while courts and political leaders looked to the Bill of Rights to justify the federal expansion of power, Americans discovered that this iconic document could be used to resist the same. As they debated the nature, purpose, and application of the Bill of Rights, Americans clarified the meaning of the term and empowered it.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Carugati @Ostrom_Workshop and Weingast on Decision-Making in the Athenian Law-Courts

Federica Carugati, Indiana University, Bloomington, Ostrom Workshop, and Department of Political Science, and School of Law, and Barry R. Weingast, Stanford University Department of Political Science, have published Rethinking Mass and Elite: Decision-Making in the Athenian Law-Courts. Here is the abstract.

In the Athenian law-courts, wealthy, educated, and powerful elites fought one another to prevail as leaders and advisors of the masses. Regulated by the masses’ ideals of a good society, elite competition pushed Athens toward stability, prosperity and cultural immortality. Or did it? This article puts pressure on the mass and elite model of Athenian litigation (M&E). According to the M&E model, litigation is a game played by elite litigants and mass audiences; elite litigants seek to win over their opponents as a means to gain honor; and the masses constitute a monolithic body with identical preferences. This model, we suggest, does not adequately explain the dynamics of law- and policy-making in the Athenian courts. Combining findings from two separate bodies of literature in classics and political science, we build a new model of Athenian litigation that modifies the M&E model in two fundamental respects: first, jurors’ preferences are meaningfully pluralistic, therefore litigants (who are not only elites) face uncertainty as to the precise position of the median juror; and second, litigants want to win, but they also have preferences over policy/legal outcomes. Our model identifies the mechanisms that enabled diverse interests to be advanced and negotiated in ways that fostered both stability and innovation in Athenian law- and policy-making.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

A Podcast and Twitter Feed Devoted To Serial @SerialObsessPod

If you are interested in the podcast Serial, check out the twitter feed Serially Obsessed @SerialObsessPod and its companion podcast Serially Obsessed.

The Space Between: CFP for International Intrigue: Plotting Espionage as Cultural Artifact

The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914-1945 invites submissions for a special issue, International Intrigue:Plotting Espionage as Cultural Artifact. The deadline is Dec. 31, 2016. Here is a link to the CFP.

Inquires and/or essays of 6000-7500 words are due to the editors by December 31, 2016.

Clare Hanson: c.hanson@soton.ac.uk
Phyllis Lassner: phyllisl@northwestern.edu
Will May: w.may@soton.ac.uk

Call for Papers, Albany Law School: Conference, The Politics of Difference and the Threshold of Law, March 31-April 1, 2017

Albany Law School is hosting a Conference in Law and the Humanities March 31-April 1, 2017. The theme is The Politics of Difference and the Threshold of Law.  Note that this conference takes place at the same time as the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities meeting next year.  Lots of opportunities for law and humanities folks to present their work.

Here are the description and CFP:

CALL FOR PAPERS

THE POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE AND THE THRESHOLD OF LAW

A CONFERENCE IN LAW AND THE HUMANITIESTHE LIBERAL STUDIES PROGRAM, UNIVERSITY AT ALBANY & ALBANY LAW SCHOOL MARCH 31 – APRIL 1, 2017  ALBANY LAW SCHOOL, ALBANY NEW YORK This conference hosts a multidisciplinary conversation on how we contend with the emergence of violence toward difference, before it receives remedial treatment by the law, that is, before it crosses the threshold of the rule of law. Many – perhaps most – forms of injustice persist for long periods of time beneath the threshold of the law, and may continue indefinitely (one thinks of recent debates about the Confederate flag at the South Carolina State Capitol, following the Charleston Church shooting). Many social institutions outside the legal system are forced to develop strategies of negotiating violence, even when this is not their principal function (one thinks of recent university responses to racial and sexual violence at the University of Missouri and elsewhere). Other social institutions that may not appear to be concerned with law can in fact be shown to have a significant engagement with legal issues (one thinks of Greek tragedy in democratic Athens, or the sentimental novel in nineteenth-century America, or the development of post-colonial studies in the university). NGO activity and social movements such as Occupy and Black Lives Matter, respond to violence and injustice, both before and after the law has intervened. Violence constructed around difference appears in contexts that may initially seem remote (consider the role of science in generating debate about environmental justice). It gives rise to new strategies of social transformation, in conditions where legal action appears impossible (such as with the Truth Commission in South Africa). Legal systems themselves adjust and transform in response to new social conditions. How are we to understand the various ways in which violence is negotiated, within the law and beyond the threshold of law? These questions bear on the constant disequilibrium between “law” and “justice.” The conference invites papers that speak to these issues from a broad range of disciplines and perspectives.
 Papers and panel proposals are invited. For papers, please provide a name, institutional affiliation, title and abstract of 200-300 words; for panels, the same information for each participant. Send to Charles Shepherdson, Director of Liberal Studies, University at Albany, cshepherdson@albany.edu. Deadline Feb. 15, 2017.

"Madame Bovary"'s Obscenity Trial: Was It Really About IP Rights?

Erin Blakemore writes about the obscenity trial of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary for JSTOR Daily., discussing Christine Haynes' article The Politics of Publishing During the Second Empire: The Trial of "Madame Bovary" Revisited which argues that the author and fellow artists were interested in upholding their intellectual property rights more than their right to freedom of expression. More here. 

I See In Your Future...Some Research Into Fortune Telling and the Law @hulu @shuteyeonhulu

Explore the legal issues raised on the new Hulu series Shut Eye by dipping into some of the essays and articles listed below:

In Law and Magic: A Collection of Essays (C. A. Corcos, ed., Carolina Academic Press, 2010), try out

Julie D. Cromer, It's In the Cards: The Law of Tarot (and Other Fortumes Told)

Craig Freeman and Stephen Banning, Rogues, Vagabonds, and Lunatics: How the Right to Listen Cleared the Future For Fortune Tellers

Pamela Edwards, Non-Mainstream Religions and the Law

Christine A. Corcos, Prosecutors and Psychics on the Air: Does a "Psychic Detective Effect" Exist? in Law and Justice on the Small Screen (Jessica Silbey and Peter Robson eds., Hart Publishing, 2012).

Christine A. Corcos, Seeing It Coming Since 1945: State Bans and Regulations of "Crafty Sciences" Speech and Activity, 37 T. Jefferson L. Rev. 39 (2014/15).

Christine A. Corcos, The Scrying Game: The First Amendment, State Regulation of the Crafty Sciences, and the Rise of Spiritualism, 1848-1944, forthcoming in v. 38 of Whittier L. Rev. (2017).

Nicole Brown Jones, Did Fortune Tellers See This Coming? Spiritual Counseling, Professional Speech, and the First Amendment, 83 Miss. L.J. 639 (2014).

and....

the Atlantic piece All in the Cards here.

See also Michael Wilson, A Manhattan Fortuneteller Cost Him Fortune After Fortune, New York Times, June 5, 2015.

Mawani on Law, Settler Colonialism, and the "Forgotten Space" of Maritime Worlds

Renisa Mawani, University of British Columbia, has published Law, Settler Colonialism, and 'The Forgotten Space' of Maritime Worlds at 12 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 107 (2016). Here is the abstract.

Law and settler colonialism is not a self-evident, contained, or straightforward field of inquiry. Rather, it uneasily straddles two overlapping bodies of scholarship: legal histories of colonialism and settler colonial studies. In part one, I place these literatures into conversation to trace their contributions, overlaps, and incommensurabilities. In part two, I turn to maritime worlds as a method of speaking across their analytic divides. Here, I consider the Torrens as a system of land registry inaugurated in the colony of South Australia (1858) and as the last clipper ship to be built in Britain (1875). In its recurring and double life, the Torrens offers an illuminating nineteenth-century example of the interconnection and interdependence of land and sea that serves as a useful lesson today. The global exigencies that arise from the past, organize the present, and impinge on the future demand a shift from terrestrial thinking toward the aqueous and amphibian legalities of settler colonial power.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Garcia-Villegas on A Comparison of Sociopolitical Legal Studies

Mauricio Garcia-Villegas, Sr., University of Wisconsin, Platteville, has published A Comparison of Sociopolitical Legal Studies at 12 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 25 (2016). Here is the abstract.

This article compares sociopolitical perspectives about the law in three regions of the world: the United States, France, and Latin America. Despite their heterogeneity, these sociolegal perspectives share many practical and theoretical similarities. For this reason, this article proposes grouping them under the more general title of sociopolitical legal studies (SLS). This general label includes a collection of transdisciplinary research, theories, and studies that view law as a sociopolitical phenomenon central to the understanding of power and society. The concept of SLS reveals the existence of a transversal ground between three academic disciplines: sociology of law, legal theory, and sociolegal studies, which, in spite of multiple connections, rarely communicate with one another. Additionally, the term studies is used in a broad sense, including not just legal theories but also empirical analyses of the law.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Engineering Ethics and Star Wars @scifipolicy @BoingBoing

The ethics of the Death Star. Discussion at BoingBoing, from SciFi Policy.

Call For Papers: First Conference on History, Law, and Politics, Federal University of Paraiba, Brazil, March 15-17, 2017 @legalhistory @UFPBoficial

Via Legal History Blog

CFP: History, Law and Politics in Brazil

The editors of the journal, Prima Facie, in conjunction with the research groups, Legal History Studies, as well as the Research and Study Network on Human Rights & Education Policy at the Federal University of Paraiba, announce the 1st Conference on History, Law, and Politics, to be held from the 15th to the 17th of March 2017 at the Federal University of Paraiba located in João Pessoa, Paraiba, Brazil. In accordance with the theme of the conference and its network groups, a range of content will be discussed aiming to understand how concepts in the disciplines of History, Political Science, and Law may intertwine to benefit the training of legal students, historians, and scholars from related fields. Researchers interested in the conference may apply to present their work as well as to attend the sessions. Participants will be divided into groups of oral presentation according to their topics of study, and whether their works are in-progress or completed. An abstract book with the complete program will be available online. A special call is under preparation for two editions of Prima Facie journal, ISSN 1678-2593. These issues, containing the selection of 40 articles amongst the works presented at the conference, will be published in 2017. A peer-reviewed book will also be published in English after the conference has been completed. We accept papers in Portuguese, English, and Spanish [here].  We are on Facebook.

More About "The Good Fight", CBS's New Legal Drama @thegoodfight

Some info about The Good Wife spinoff, The Good Fight, from Entertainment Weekly.  It will feature Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski)'s personal and professional relationships as she restarts her career at the law firm of Lucca, Quinn. We'll also get to meet Ms. Lockhart's goddaughter Maia (Rose Leslie), a newly minted attorney, who's in a relationship with another lawyer played by Helene York. The show premieres on CBS's All-Access streaming service February 19th.

A Podcast About Crime and Pop Culture @HBOWestworld

Check out this podcast from true crime writers Rebecca Lavoie, Kevin Flynn, Toby Ball, Lara Bricker, and others. It's called Crime Writers On...and it features discussion of true crime, the media, and popular culture. A recent episode features a discussion of the HBO series Westworld. 

Imagining Literary Characters, With the Assistance of a Police Artist

Via @christianbok

The nice thing about fiction is that it allows you to imagine in your mind's eye what characters look like, even though authors do often provide you with some notion of those characters' physical attributes. Thus, the arguments over whether one actor or another should play the role in the inevitable movie. But what happens if a police sketch artist, or someone doing a similar job, tries her hand at producing images of literary characters, using the type of kit that police artists use to assist witnesses in identifying suspects? Brian Davis has done just that. Here are some of his results.

More about a police or forensic artist's work here.

Call For Papers: Captivating Criminality, June 29th-July 1st, 2017

Via Thom Giddens @ThomGiddens

Call for Papers: Captivating Criminality 4

Crime Fiction: Detection, Public and Private, Past and Present 29th June – 1st July 2017

Corsham Court, Bath Spa University, UK

The Captivating Criminality Network is delighted to announce its fourth UK conference. Building upon and developing ideas and themes from the previous three successful conferences,

Crime Fiction: Detection, Public and Private, Past and Present will examine what is arguably the very heart of this field of critical study. Crime fiction narratives continue to gain in both popularity and critical appreciation. This conference will consider the ways in which both the public and private aspects of criminality and detection merge and differ from each other.

The police detective, bound by laws of the state (however loosely adhered to) brings a different set of skills and methods of detection than the often maverick private eye. Of course, detection includes the criminals who attempt to avoid capture – the term ‘anti-hero’ can apply to both upholders of the law and to those evading it.

A key question that this conference will address is the enduring appeal of crime fiction and its ability to incorporate other disciplines such as Criminology, Film, and Psychology. From the ‘sensational’ novelists of the 1860s to today’s ‘Domestic Noir’ narratives, crime fiction has proved itself exceptionally proficient in expanding its parameters to encompass changes in the wider culture. With this in mind, we are interested in submissions that approach crime narratives from the earliest days of crime fiction up until the present day.

This international, interdisciplinary event is organised by Bath Spa University and the Captivating Criminality Network, and we invite scholars, practitioners and fans of crime writing, as well as interested parties from Criminology, Psychology, Sociology, and Film and Media, to participate in this conference that will address these key elements of crime fiction and real crime.

Topics may include, but are not restricted to:  

The Detective, Then and Now
The Anti-Hero
True Crime
Contemporary Crime Fiction
Victorian Crime Fiction
The Golden Age
Hardboiled Fiction
Forensics and Detection
The Body as Evidence (silent witness)
Crime and Clues
Dostoevsky and Beyond: The Genealogy of Crime Writing Fatal Femininity Seduction and Sexuality The Criminal Analyst Others and Otherness Landscape and Identity The Country and the City The Media and Detection Adaptation and Interpretation Justice Versus Punishment Lack of Order and Resolution

  Please send 300 word proposals to Dr. Fiona Peters
 (f.peters@bathspa.ac.uk) by 13th February 2017. The abstract should include your  name, email address, and affiliation, as well as the title of your paper. Please feel free to  submit abstracts presenting work in progress as well as completed projects. Postgraduate  students are welcome. Papers will be a maximum of 20 minutes in length. Proposals for  suggested panels are also welcome.
 ​ Attendance fees: £145 (£95 students)

Kastenberg on War Time Hysteria, 1917: Senator Miles Poindexter, "American-Ness," and the Strange Case of Colonel Carl Reichmann

Joshua E. Kastenberg, University of New Mexico School of Law, has published War Time Hysteria, 1917: Senator Miles Poindexter, 'American-Ness,' and the Strange Case of Colonel Carl Reichmann. Here is the abstract.

One hundred years ago, after the United States entered into World War I, Congress passed the Espionage Act and other significant limitations on basic freedoms. Several state governments likewise vigorously prosecuted alleged "subversives" under anti-syndicalism acts. The diminution of basic rights and the treatment of ethnic German minorities has been the subject of scholarship since. However, the treatment of German minorities in the armed forces has not been thoroughly studied, even though such a study could add to the broader field of civil-military relations. Nor has the wartime behavior of legislators in regard to the armed forces as well as their contribution to the popular prejudices of the day, and its effect on the national polity been the subject of analysis. This article, which presents a singular event, is a microcosm of civil-military relations and wartime hysteria during the period in which the United States participated in World War I. It is not my intent to focus on the accomplishments of Colonel Reichmann or argue that he was wrongly denied a promotion. Rather, it is my intent to examine how a singular senator who did not serve on a relevant committee was able to master a popular prejudice to manipulate legislative and executive processes to achieve political – albeit short lived – prominence.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Slocum on The Nature of Legal Interpretation: What Jurists Can Learn About Legal Interpretation From Linguistics and Philosophy

Brian G. Slocum, McGeorge School of Law, is publishing Introduction: The Nature of Legal Interpretation: What Jurists Can Learn about Legal Interpretation from Linguistics and Philosophy in The Nature of Legal Interpretation: What Jurists Can Learn About Legal Interpretation From Linguistics and Philosophy (University of Chicago Press, 2017). Here is the abstract.

Language shapes and reflects how we think about the world. It engages and intrigues us. Our everyday use of language is quite effortless — we are all experts on our native tongues. Despite this, issues of language and meaning have long flummoxed the judges on whom we depend for the interpretation of our most fundamental legal texts. Should a judge feel confident in defining common words in the texts without the aid of a linguist? How is the meaning communicated by the text determined? Should the communicative meaning of texts be decisive, or at least influential? To fully engage and probe these questions of interpretation, this volume draws upon a variety of experts from several fields, who collectively examine the interpretation of legal texts. In The Nature of Legal Interpretation, the contributors argue that the meaning of language is crucial to the interpretation of legal texts, such as statutes, constitutions, and contracts. Accordingly, expert analysis of language from linguists, philosophers, and legal scholars should influence how courts interpret legal texts. Offering insightful new interdisciplinary perspectives on originalism and legal interpretation, these essays put forth a significant and provocative discussion of how best to characterize the nature of language in legal texts.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.