Invitation and Call For Participation: Northeast Regional Law and Society Meeting, January 2013

Northeast Regional Law and Society Meeting

January 11-12, 2013

Amherst College

Invitation and Call for Participation

You are cordially invited to participate in the third Northeast Regional Law and Society Conference which will be held at Amherst College on January 11 and 12, 2013. This meeting is intended for law and society scholars from New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

We have designed this conference to bring together faculty and graduate students from the region's diverse community of law and society scholars for two days of intellectual exchange and community building. We hope to provide a collegial, informal, and small setting in which to explore law and society as a field, to introduce scholars to the field, to discuss areas in which our research agendas need to be developed, to engage debates about the various theories which animate our work, and to establish an intellectual forum for sustained and engaged conversation.  The meeting will provide the occasion for a lively mix of small group discussions, presentations, debates, and social gatherings, all designed to encourage spirited dialog and collegial conversation.

We will be organizing sessions of the following types:

1. Paper Presentation Sessions. In these sessions we will have one paper and two commentators who read and discuss the paper and in which the paper which they discuss would be circulated in advance to those who would like to attend the session We invite scholars interested in having their work be the focus of such a session to send a one page abstract of your paper as an e-mail attachment in Word or RTF to northeastlaw@amherst.edu by October 1^st, 2012.  

2. Critical Intervention Sessions.  For these sessions we will revisit classic texts in the field and/or leading scholars will pose questions about, and moderate discussions of, key research areas. Examples of the kinds of topics considered in past years: legal consciousness, law and war, psychoanalysis and law, and race and racial justice.

We will also have a plenary speaker.

You are invited to attend without presenting work, to submit a proposal to present work in a paper presentation session, or to volunteer to serve as a chair/commentator.

If you are interested in serving as a chair/commentator, please send an e-mail to northeastlaw@amherst.edu by October 1^st, 2012 indicating your willingness to serve and your areas of expertise/interest.

If you have any questions please contact Austin Sarat at adsarat@amherst.edu or 413-542-2308.