CALL
FOR PAPERS: ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF LAW, CULTURE, AND THE HUMANITIES
Seventeenth
Annual Conference
March
10-11, 2014, University of Virginia, School of Law
We
are pleased to announce that the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Association
for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities will be held at the University
of Virginia School of Law, March 10-11, 2014. We invite your
participation. Please note, panel and paper proposals are due Tuesday,
October 15th, 2013
The
Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities is an organization
of scholars engaged in interdisciplinary, humanistically-oriented legal
scholarship. The Association brings together a wide range of people engaged in
scholarship on legal history, legal theory and jurisprudence, law and cultural
studies, law and literature, law and the performing arts, and legal
hermeneutics. We want to encourage dialogue across and among these fields about
issues of interpretation, identity, and values, about authority, obligation,
and justice, and about law's place in culture.
This
year’s conference theme is as follows:
The
Politics of Law and the Humanities: Crisis, Austerity, Instrumentalism
How
will law and the humanities scholarship fare against the pressure of the
science and technology paradigm that has now permeated the institutional
frameworks of academia? Will it mime the general humanities and, as suggested
by the defeatist pomp of many national “crisis reports”, merely retreat to its
traditional position as the well-mannered guardian of liberal values? Will law
and the humanities scholarship be subsumed under the science paradigm’s
instrumental ethos by either taking on aims and objectives sanctioned by
government policies or by domesticating its own political potential to address
those very same policies? Or can we imagine more salutary alternatives to
defeatism and instrumental subsumption?
The
terrain is well known. The ongoing economic crisis has engendered a worldwide
decline in funding for research in the humanities showing sharp decreases
between 2009 and 2012 with funds almost cut in half each year. The global trend
is also detectable at national levels, with growing gaps between public
investment into STEM subjects and the humanities. But the changes do not merely
concern the fiscal prioritization of diminishing resources. The social
sciences, including law, are under constant political pressure as lawmakers
question the value of curiosity-driven basic research. This pressure is then
mirrored at the institutional level of individual law schools emphasizing their
vocational remits at the expense of research and scholarship. And this research
and scholarship is itself increasingly cast in reformist, practical, and
“policy relevant” terms, and directed to issues of perceived topical and
regulatory concern.
The
implied allegation is simple enough: basic research in the humanities and
social sciences is, if not obsolete, then at least a luxury we can’t afford in
these times; because it cannot satisfy the more immediate needs of
market-driven societies in the current economic climate, it is politically
irrelevant.
But
can we imagine new ways to claim – or, perhaps, to reclaim – our political
relevance? Are we relevant in other, perhaps more radical ways? And if we are,
how? Is there a politics that is specific to law and the humanities? Or can we
articulate the limits to the conversation about “relevance” in a way accessible
to minds focused on instrumentality? How might we respond to our critics, or do
we ignore them?
Participants
are encouraged to reflect on this broad, but not exclusive, conference theme.
In
addition to sessions that connect to the theme, examples of other types of
sessions we expect to organize include: History, Memory and Law; Reading
Race; Law and Literature; Human Rights and Cultural Pluralism; Speech, Silence,
and the Language of Law; Judgment, Justice, and Law; Beyond Identity; The Idea
of Practice in Legal Thought; Metaphor and Meaning; Representing Legality in
Film and Mass Media; Anarchy, Liberty and Law; What is Excellence in
Interpretation?; Ethics, Religion, and Law; Moral Obligation and Legal Life;
The Post-Colonial in Literary and Legal Study; Processes and Possibilities in
Interdisciplinary Law Teaching.
We
urge those interested in attending to consider submitting complete panels, and
we hope to encourage a variety of formats-roundtables, sessions at which
everyone reads the papers in advance, sessions in which commentators respond to
a single paper. We invite proposals for session in which the focus is on
pedagogy or methodology, for author-meets-readers sessions organized around
important books in the field, or for sessions in which participants focus on
performance (theatrical, filmic, musical, poetic).
How
to register:
ASLCH
uses a two part registration system (this will all be explained in detail on
the website). First you register your paper or panel and pay a $35 membership
fee. Then after January 10th, 2014, assuming your paper or panel is accepted,
you go back to the same website (an email will be sent on that day to remind
you) and pay the conference fee.
Here
is the link to register:
Hotel
information:
We
have reserved rooms in three Charlottesville hotels. The main conference
hotel, where we have reserved 80 rooms, is Hyatt Place, a brand-new
hotel. It is a short drive from the Law School, and they have a shuttle
service. The rate we negotiated is $139/night
plus tax. To reserve, call +1 434 426 4428 and state that you are
a part of the ASLCH. You must reserve a room in Hyatt Place by Sunday, February
9.
For
those of you who would rather be walking distance from the law school, we have
reserved 30 rooms at the Inn at Darden, a hotel owned and operated by UVA's
Darden School of Business, about a 5-minute walk from the law school. To
reserve a room there, call +1 434 243 5000 or if in the US 434-243-5000
and state that you are a part of ASLCH. The rate for the room is
$135/night plus tax. You will need to reserve a room by Saturday, February 1.
In
case both of these hotels fill, we have also reserved 30 rooms at the Courtyard
Marriott University. It is a short drive from the Law School, and if
enough participants are staying there, we may be able to run a bus to the
conference. To reserve a room online, please go to www.marriott.com/chodt and use the booking code ASLASLA or ASLASLB. You can
also call +1 434 977 1700 and state that you are a part of
ASLCH. The room rate is $169/night plus tax. You will need to reserve a
room by Sunday, February 9.
If
you have any questions you can email the hotel managers directly at these
addresses:
Prizes
and nominations:
We
have the following awards that we give out at our annual conference. If you
would like to nominate someone for the awards, please email the people listed
below who is associated with that prize. Please note unless otherwise noted,
all prizes nomination deadlines are the same: November 15th, 2013.
Julien
Mezey Award
The
Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities invites
submissions for the 2014 Julien Mezey Award. This annual prize is awarded to
the dissertation that most promises to enrich and advance interdisciplinary
scholarship at the intersection of law, culture and the humanities. The award
will be presented at the Assocations Annual Conference, hosted by the
University of Virginia on March 10-11, 2014.
The
Association seeks the submission of outstanding work from a wide variety of
perspectives, including, but not limited to law and cultural studies, legal
hermeneutics and rhetoric, law and literature, law and psychoanalysis, law and
visual studies, legal history, legal theory and jurisprudence. Scholars
completing humanities-oriented dissertations in SJD and related programs, as
well as those earning PhDs, are encouraged to submit their work. Applicants
eligible for the 2014 award must have defended their dissertation successfully
between September 1, 2012 and August 31, 2013.
For
your nominations and submissions, please email Imani Perry at iperry@princeton.edu.
Applications and nominations are due by November 15, 2013
The
Austin Sarat Award
We
are pleased to announce the Austin Sarat Award, a prize to be offered to a
graduate student for a paper presented at an ASLCH annual conference. We are
looking for papers that represent excellence in interdisciplinary thought,
research and writing in the field of law, culture and the humanities. Although
presentation of the paper at the conference is required to be eligible, the
award winner will be chosen based upon finished papers submitted after the
annual conference.
The
deadline for this prize already passed (it was at the end of May, 2013) because
we have the nomination process active while papers are still fresh in people’s
mind. But keep this prize in mind for shortly after the 2014 conference ends.
Please email Catherine Kellogg at ckellogg@ualberta.ca with any questions.
Graduate
Student workshop
The
Annual Law Culture and Humanities conference is pleased to offer a graduate
student workshop designed for graduate students who are undertaking research
that cuts across law, cultural studies, literature, philosophy, legal studies,
anthropology, political science, economics. The workshop is designed to provide
mentoring, practical advice on publishing and applying for work, as well as
have some fun. Applications to the workshop should include a statement of
research, a current curriculum vitae, and a short statement of the paper that
each student will be presenting at the conference. There is limited space for
the workshop, and so we cannot admit all (although we will do our best!).
Please forward your application to ckellogg@ualberta.ca by
November 15.
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