CFP: Comics Forum 2020: Pages of Whiteness @ComicsForum

Comics Forum 2020: Pages of Whiteness

November 2020, Online

Conference Lead: Olivia Hicks

Call for Contributions

In White, Richard Dyer argues that race is something which is only applied to non-white people; and thus white people are allowed to speak from a non-racialised, normalised position of power.1  In Unstable Masks, Sean Guynes and Martin Lund state that whiteness is a set of malleable historical, geographical and cultural values, that is ‘one of the key historical formations of power, surveillance and control’ in the West.2 Drawing attention to whiteness is drawing attention to what is naturalised and/or normally invisible.

The title of this conference comes from Tracy D. Morgan’s essay ‘Pages of Whiteness’, which explores white supremacy in the erotic fantasies of the queer physical culture movement in the American post-war period.3 The essay title refers both to the white paper used to produce physical culture magazines, but also the overwhelming presence of white bodies within, and the suffocating racist fantasies which inform the rare appearances of Black or Latino models. The phrase suggests an intersection of identity, materiality and (comics) production. This essay is one of many exposing how whiteness shapes the media we create and consume. The idea of whiteness as a ‘norm’ and the backdrop against which all other identities are contrasted and controlled, filters into

every facet of the comics we read and study; from the over-abundance of white characters and storylines, the privileging of white editorial and creative voices, to the ‘whiteness’ of the comic’s pages, suggesting a white, blank default, to the inks which are used in production, which privilege white skin tones. As Zoe D. Smith notes in her essay ‘Four Color-ism’, ‘Brown skin in comics of this period fails in part because there’s too much ink. The layers of cyan, magenta, and yellow are unreliable and painfully noticeable. White skin, by contrast, is thoughtlessly stable.’4

Maintaining the status quo of Western society is a thoughtless action; challenging the structuring logic of our worlds is a task which requires engagement and action. This conference is calling for a critical examining of whiteness and the structuring systems of comics and comics scholarship. One could respond to this theme by exploring whiteness within comics and/or comics academia. One could also choose to examine those identities which are marginalised or excluded; exploring creators and characters with marginalised identities. This call also encourages work on the production and materiality of comics; submissions on colouring (which is an underappreciated part of comics production) and zine culture, where creators often deliberately choose colourful paper or a collage effect which disrupts the notion of the white page being the norm.

Some ways Pages of Whiteness could be interpreted are as follows:

Whiteness and Comics

Comics and Race

Comics and Identity

Comics and Activism/Protest

Queering Comics

Comics Production (including colouring)

Zine Culture

Colour and Comics

Comics scholarship; new approaches to studying comics

Comics Practice as research

Digital “Page-less” Comics

Formats

Comics Forum 2020 will take place online. We invite contributors to submit proposals in the following formats, but we are open to other suggestions if speakers are in a position to offer them:

Pre-recorded videos: This may be a single speaker talk of 10-15 minutes, or a 20-minute conversation between two or more speakers. These can be followed by live Q&As either in a video call and/or via Twitter (please specify which you wish to use when you submit your proposal).

Live Events: These may be workshops, reading groups, demonstrations of practice or research methods etc. Events will be hosted on relevant openly-accessible platforms suitable for large-scale live video calls – if you would like to use a particular platform please specify this, otherwise make clear in your proposal what the format of your proposed event is so we can ensure we have access to a platform that will support it. Please note that time-zones mean that live events can be geographically exclusive, so if you can run your event in a way that includes some asynchronous content this will enable more people to participate.

Digital Zines: Zines on the conference theme can be submitted in PDF format for inclusion in the event via Issuu.

Proposals of up to 250 words in length for contributions in the formats detailed above are now being accepted at the following link: https://tiny.cc/comicsforum20. The deadline for submissions is the 1st of September 2020 and you will be notified of acceptance by or before the 14th of September 2020. Please include a short (100 word) biography with your proposal.

Comics Forum 2020 is part of the Thought Bubble Sequential Art Festival. Find out more about Thought Bubble at: https://www.thoughtbubblefestival.com/.

Note: The Comics Forum organising committee asked Olivia Hicks to be a co-organiser for the 2020 conference in 2019. In January 2020, Olivia proposed the call ‘Pages of Whiteness’ which as accepted by the team immediately. The call was an urgent call to action in comics scholarship in January, and recent events have only served to further highlight how necessary this work is.

1: Richard Dyer, White, (London: Routledge, 1997), p.2.

2: Sean Guynes and Martin Lund, ‘Introduction’ in: Unstable Masks: Whiteness and American Superhero Comics (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2019), p.2.

3: Tracy D. Morgan, ‘Pages of Whiteness: Race, Physique Magazines, and the Emergence of Gay Culture’ in Queer Studies: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Anthology, edited by Brett Beemyn and Mickey Eliason (New York and London: New York University Press, 1996), pp.280-297.

4: Zoe D. Smith, ‘4 Colorism, or, the Ashiness of it all’, Women Write About Comics (24 May 2019), <https://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2019/05/4-colorism-or-the-ashiness-of-it-all/>

CFP: Special Issue: Posthuman Legalities: New Materialism and Law Beyond the Human

From Edward Elgar Publishing: CFP

Special Issue: 'Posthuman Legalities: New Materialism and Law Beyond the Human'

The Journal of Human Rights and the Environment (JHRE) warmly welcomes submissions for the upcoming Special Issue: 'Posthuman Legalities: New Materialism and Law Beyond the Human'.  Contemporary pressures emerging from both climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic suggest the urgent need to move beyond the longstanding centrality to law of the human subject that acts upon ‘the world’ as object. Such juridical humanism is now clearly not only unsustainable and increasingly implausible, but profoundly dangerous to all life.

How might law, then, in the words of Gustavo Wilshes, ‘learn how to come to terms with other agents of the territory that are not resources’? How can legal systems move beyond reductive objectifications and learn to negotiate (or not) with soils, hydro-meteorological dynamics, volcanoes, viruses, and ecosystems as lively, agentic, more-than-human participants in world-making? Wilshes’ call is an invitation to reflect on rights, responsibilities, agreements, and other legal concepts in an entirely different way. It invites probing new epistemological and ‘ontological openings’ for legal thought and practice in times of planetary crisis. What kind of law is a law after the Human? What posthuman legalities might alternative onto-epistemic reflection make possible?

This Special Issue of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment invites reflections on posthuman legalities drawing primarily upon two lively approaches to other kinds of law that might emerge from an ‘ontological otherwise’. The first approach is the ‘law beyond the human’ approach; the second is new materialism. How might tracing ontological plural legalities through these related but distinctive thought-ways open new puzzles and possibilities for the legal? How might drawing upon indigenous cosmovisions, cutting-edge science-inspired complexity-sensitive openness, and diverse onto-relationalities re-story law in a way that enables a posthuman capaciousness of concern—a passionate legal ethics of the more-than-human? The editors invite submissions for this issue that engage with the need to speak both beyond and in excess of ‘the human’ so as to hold open spaces of more-than-human meaning in the legal field. For more information, visit the JHRE homepage on Elgaronline, and for details on how to submit please see below. We look forward to hearing from you. Anna Grear, Julia Dehm & Samvel Varvastian Editor-in-Chief, Co-Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor

Special Issue Submission Process

If you are interested in submitting to this edition, please in the first instance send abstracts for consideration to the editors via email (listed below). Full and final submissions for the edition should be made via the Journal of Human Rights and Environment submission portal, and should not exceed 10,000 words (including references). The submission deadline is December 1st 2020. The issue is scheduled for publication in June 2021.

CFP: The Director's Series 2020/21 Law and Humanities In a Pandemic

CALL FOR PAPERS - The Director's Series 2020/21 Law and Humanities in a Pandemic

27th April 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic already has had a vast array of legal implications which have dramatically altered daily life. While liberal, universal rights such as liberty and privacy are being radically curtailed in the name of public health, legal responses impact upon populations in radically unequal ways. These dimensions include - but certainly are not limited to - race, gender, disability, vulnerability and social class. Legal interventions are consistently justified on the basis of science, which is assumed to be unequivocal and beyond debate. At the same time, resistance to legal action is also apparent, as rumours and conspiracy theories - like the virus itself - multiply around the globe. At the same time as public policy measures are introduced, systems of legal regulation and compliance (which were often themselves justified on the basis of public protection) are modified or suspended in the name of necessity, with no indication as to when or how they will be restored. Moreover, the relationship between law and discretion has been reshaped, and this in turn has impacted upon individuals and communities.

The aim of this series is to seek to ‘make sense’ of the wide ranging relationship between law and the pandemic through the insights of the humanities, broadly understood as the set of cultural influences which are shaping the use of law and the responses to it. Sarah Churchwell argues that ‘as this pandemic is so brutally reminding us, nothing in our society occurs in a vacuum. Everything occurs in a historical, political, economic, and cultural context, and the humanities is in the business of understanding context’. As Churchwell observes, ‘the pandemic has stripped away all our usual contexts, and in so doing it has made much more visible, and much more urgent, what it is that we do when we need to be human’.

Law is a vitally important component of that context and it warrants close attention. It forms an integral part of the challenge of ‘being human’ and, in turn, law can be illuminated through a turn to the humanities, whether it be history, political theory, literary analysis, philosophy, gender studies, film theory or cultural studies (and that list is far from exhaustive). In an effort at understanding the context of the pandemic, scholars at all career stages and across disciplinary boundaries are invited to contribute to a series of ‘work in progress’ seminars at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies during the 2020-21 academic year. Given the uncertain and changed times for knowledge production (like all other forms of production), the format for the presentations will be flexible - remote, ‘live’, or some combination - depending upon the circumstances that we face. Innovative and experimental forms of presentation can be accommodated. Scholars from all parts of the world are welcome to contribute. Those located in the Global South are particularly encouraged, especially given the way in which the pandemic has (once again) privileged knowledge, expertise and experience from the Global North. 

The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies is itself part of the School of Advanced Study, which unites nine internationally renowned institutes in the humanities at the centre of the University of London. Together it forms the UK's national centre for the support of researchers and the promotion of research in the humanities.

A special issue proposal is planned for the publication of the output of the series. Preliminary interest has been expressed by the Editor of the Institute’s online, open access journal, Amicus Curiae. The Institute also has the capacity to publish the special issue as a hard copy volume with the University of London Press. 

Anyone interested in contributing is invited to contact the Director of the Institute, Professor Carl Stychin, by email: carl.stychin@sas.ac.uk.  A title and abstract for proposed contributions should be submitted to the Director by 30th June 2020. The seminars will be scheduled throughout the 2020-21 academic year.

Reference

Sarah Churchwell, ‘Being Human Under Lockdown’, https://beinghumanfestival.org/being-human-under-lockdown/

Download the Call For Papers (PDF)

Call for Proposals: European History and Politics in Contemporary Crime Narratives @DetectH2020

Call for Proposals:

Through a Glass Darkly:

European History and Politics in Contemporary Crime Narratives

Monica Dall’Asta, Jacques Migozzi, Federico Pagello, Andrew Pepper eds.

To talk about the crime genre—as opposed to detective or spy or noir fiction—is to recognise the comprehensiveness of a category that speaks to and contains multiple sub-genres and forms (Ascari, 2007). In this volume, we want to uncover the ways in which the crime genre, in all of its multiple guises, forms and media/transmedia developments, has investigated and interrogated the concealed histories and political underpinnings of national and supranational societies and institutions in Europe, particularly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

 

Two most popular expression of the crime genre, the detective novel and the spy novel, have long been identified as ‘sociological’ in their orientation (Boltanski, 2012). These forms often tackle enigmas or uncover conspiracies that are concealed by and within states, asking searching questions about the failures of democracy and the national and international criminal justice systems to deliver just societies. Similarly, following the example of U.S. hard-boiled fiction, the ‘noir’ variant of the genre has also established itself as a ‘literature of crisis’ (according to Jean-Patrick Manchette’s formula), where the shredding of official truths and of ‘reality’ itself ends up revealing dark political motives that elicit an even starker set of ethical and affective interrogations (Neveu, 2004). While the obvious links between the ‘noir’ and the ‘hard-boiled’ traditions of crime fiction (e.g. between Manchette and Hammett) suggest an American-French or trans-Atlantic connection, we are keen to stress that the sociological and political orientation of the European crime genre—especially since 1989 and the corresponding opening up of national borders and markets—requires examining both global/glocal and multi-national (and state-bound) issues and challenges. It is here that the European dimension of the proposed volume is best articulated because, to do justice to this context, we need to pay attention not just to discreet national traditions, but the ways in which contemporary iterations of the genre interrogate the workings of policing, law, criminality and justice across borders and nations (Pepper and Schmid, 2016).

The transnational framework of the DETECt project (Detecting Transcultural Identities in Popular European Crime Narratives) is necessarily and acutely concerned with civic and ethical issues linked to the construction of new European new identities. The proposed volume aims to explore the ways in which these new identities are formulated and thematised in European crime novels, films or TV series, particularly in relation to the interrogations raised by the uncovering of hidden aspects of both the historical past and the contemporary political landscapes. Contributions are encouraged which look at particular case studies or identify larger national and/or transnational trends or synthesise the relationship between individual texts and these larger trends. It is envisaged that the volume will be organised into the three sections outlined below. Prospective contributors are invited to identify where their articles might sit within this structure as well as to outline the particular focus adopted by their essay in relation to the general topic. The list of topics in each section is to be regarded as indicative rather than exhaustive.

1. Crime Narratives and the History of Europe

European crime narratives from the last thirty years have frequently referred to collective traumas and conflicts that have torn European societies apart throughout the 20th century. Contributions are invited that look at the ways in which these fictional works have restaged and critically reinterpreted some of the most tragic pages in European recent history, including (but not limited to) the following iterations of violent rupture and social breakdown:

- The Civil War and Francoist dictatorship in Spanish crime narratives (e.g. Montalbán, La isla minima);

- Fascism, surveillance and the police-state (e.g. Lucarelli, Gori, De Giovanni) and the role of oppositional memory (e.g. Morchio, Dazieri) in Italian detective fiction;

- Fascistic/right-wing nationalist movements in interwar Scandinavia (e.g. Larsson, Mankell);

- The Third Reich as the historical biotope of crime fiction (e.g. Kerr, Gilbers);

- The constant presence of wars as a breeding ground for crime in French crime novels: World War I and II, collaboration, the Algerian War, colonisation, post-colonisation (e.g. Daeninckx, Férey);

- The heavy presence of Cold War images and axiology in spy novels and films, including those appeared after the fall of the Berlin Wall, both in Western and Eastern Europe (e.g. Kondor, Furst);

- The ‘Troubles’ in Irish and British crime fiction (e.g. Peace, McNamee).

2. Crime Narratives and the Present of Europe

Our present time is characterized by a number of social, political, financial/economic crises that threaten the construction of a cosmopolitan pan-European identity in line with the EU’s founding ideals. Crime narratives attempt to offer realistic representations of such contemporary crises by putting in place a number of ‘chronotopes’ that symbolise social divisions and peripheral and marginalized identities. We encourage essays that examine the ways in which post-1989 European crime narratives have represented the emergence of nationalisms, xenophobia, racism and other threats to the social cohesiveness of European democracies. We also invite contributions that use the trope of the crisis to explore how the links between crime, business and politics have polluted or corrupted the democratic imperatives of European social democracies and institutions from the outset. Topics might include:  

- The Kosovo War, and more broadly the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s, as the first signs of a generalised geopolitical chaos (e.g. in French noir novels);

- The financial crisis of 2008 and its devastating consequences for individuals, communities and whole societies (e.g. Bruen and French in Ireland; Markaris in Greece; Dahl in Sweden; Lemaître in France);

- The migrant crisis (within and outside the EU) and the emergence of new anxieties about belonging and/or otherness (e.g. Mankell, Dolan, Rankin);

- Climate change, pollution, and environmental destruction (e.g. Tuomainen, Pulixi);

- The blurring of crime and capitalism and the depiction of crime as a form of social protest vis-à-vis the effects of global capitalism and neoliberal deregulation and privatisation (e.g. Manotti, Carlotto, Heinichen, the TV series Bron);

- Inquiries into the effects of contemporary forms of patriarchy, gendered violence and misogyny and their links to other forms of oppression and domination (e.g. Lemaître, Slimani, Macintosh, Gimenez-Bartlett Larsson, McDermid).

3. Crime Narratives and the Future of Europe

European crime narratives explore a broad range of social and cultural identities across different scales: from the more stable identities attached to local contexts through the new mobile, precarious and mutating identities fostered by the dynamics of globalization. This section will look into how these different identities and their complex interplay can suggest ways to frame the future of Europe. Contributions could address how crime narratives try to make sense of the complex, if yet perhaps contradictory, set of representations circulating across different European public spaces and collective imaginaries. On the one hand, we might ask whether something like a European crime genre even actually exists, given that these works typically demonstrate suspicions about ‘outsiders’ and only rarely offer positive representations of post-national transcultural identities. On the other hand, however, the genre does give us glimpses into what might be achieved through cross-border policing initiatives, organised under or by Interpol and Europol, in the face of organised crime gangs involved in transnational smuggling and trafficking networking. Contributions to this final section are encouraged to reflect upon how crime narratives produced by and in between the discreet nation-states frame the hopes and limits of European cohesiveness and the continent’s future or futures. Essays could focus on one or more of the following topics:

- The interplay between local, regional, national and transnational identities as represented through specific narrative tropes, such as in particular the local police station, the interrogation room, the frontier or border, and so on;

- The connection between social deprivation at the local end of the geopolitical scale and different global systems and networks at the other end;

- The role of borders, cities, violence, rebellion, policing and surveillance in producing new identities and subjectivities not wholly anchored in discreet nation-states. Attention could also be given to formal innovations insofar as these allow or enable the expression of new identities;

- The hope and consolation offered by the resilient community or village (Broadchurch, Shetland) or the extended family (Markaris’s Kostas Charistos series) in the face of the messy, brutal contingencies of a world ruled by criminal and business elites;

- Social banditry as a form of contestation directed against social inequalities produced by capitalism (Carlotto’s Alligator series; La casa de papel).

If you are interested in submitting a proposal to be considered for inclusion in this volume, please send an abstract of no more than 300 words and a short biography to info@detect-project.eu by May 31, 2020. We would encourage you to identify the section of the proposed volume where your essay would be best situated. We are looking to commission up to 14 essays in total of 7000 words each including footnotes and bibliographic references.

Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting, June 1-3, 2020: Call For Papers @CndHistAssoc

The Canadian Historical Association has issued its Call for Papers for the 2020 Annual Meeting. The meeting will take place at Western University, June 1-3, 2020. Here is a link to the website.

CFP: The Feminist Legal Theory Collaborative Research Network Seeks Submissions for LSA Annual Meeting, May 28-31, 2020

Call for Papers – Friday, September 20 Deadline

The Feminist Legal Theory Collaborative Research Network

Seeks submissions for the

Law and Society Association Annual Meeting

May 28-31, 2020 in Denver, Colorado

Submission link: https://form.jotform.com/91827795835172

Dear friends and colleagues:

We invite you to submit a paper for a panel to be sponsored by the Feminist Legal Theory Collaborative Research Network at the 2020 Law and Society Annual Meeting in Denver. The Feminist Legal Theory CRN brings together law and society scholars across a range of fields who are interested in feminist legal theory. Information about the Law and Society meeting is available at https://www.lawandsociety.org/index.html. 

We will give preference to individual paper proposals over proposals for panels that are pre-formed.  One of the goals of the Feminist Legal Theory CRN is to encourage scholars to engage with the diverse work of others across the academy. Any proposals for a fully-formed panel should address specifically the efforts that the panel organizers have made to ensure diversity among presenters, including race, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity; diversity in the institutions of presenters’ affiliation and/or primary training; diversity among positions in the academy such as senior vs. junior scholars, tenured vs. non-tenured participants, doctrinal vs. non-doctrinal faculty. 

This year’s meeting invites us to explore “Rule and Resistance.”  We are especially interested in proposals that explore the application of feminist legal theory to this theme, broadly construed. We are also interested in papers that will permit us to collaborate with other CRNs, such as the Critical Research on Race and the Law CRN. We welcome multidisciplinary paper proposals and proposals from scholars from all parts of the world.

Our goal is to stimulate focused discussion of papers on which scholars are currently working rather than to seek fully-formed panels.  Thus, while you may submit papers that are closer to publication, we are particularly eager to receive proposals for works-in-progress that are at an earlier stage and will benefit from the discussion that the panels will provide. We strongly encourage applications from junior scholars and graduate students – as well as people who are new to feminist legal theory.

The Planning Committee will assign individual papers to panels of four presenters, based on subject matter. Each paper presentation should run roughly 10 to 15 minutes to allow ample time for discussion. We will also assign a chair, and one or two commentators/discussants for each panel, to provide feedback on the papers and promote discussion.

In addition to traditional panels, we are open to proposals in the other formats that the LSA allows, including Author Meets Reader, Salon, or Roundtable sessions. If you have an idea that you think would work well in one of these formats, please also use the submission form above.  Organizers of these types of sessions should address in their proposal the same diversity criteria listed above.

Finally–and new this year–the FLT CRN welcomes submissions for roundtables on how to incorporate feminist principles into both teaching methods (pedagogical strategies as well as classroom practices) and course coverage across subject areas. Sessions could potentially address topics such as: (1) what feminist teaching can look like and (2) how to deal with the unique challenges of teaching in a hostile or indifferent environment to feminism. Preference will be given to proposals that involve materials or demonstrations.

Please also note that LSA rules limit each participant to a single conference appearance as a paper panelist or as a roundtable participant.

As a condition of participating as part of a program sponsored by the CRN, we also ask that you agree to serve as a chair and/or commentator/discussant for another panel or participant. We will of course take into account expertise and topic preferences to the degree possible.

Chairs are responsible for the primary organization of the panel. Chairs will develop a 100 to 250 word description for the session and submit the session proposal to LSA before the November 6 LSA deadline.  This will ensure that other participants accepted by the CRN can submit their proposal to LSA, using the panel number assigned by the CRN. The Chair may also serve as the Discussant for the panel, or there may be a separate Discussant.  Where possible, we will attempt to assign two Discussants to each paper panel. Discussants read the two to three papers assigned to them and prepare a short commentary to offer feedback and serve as a basis for discussion among the panelist and audience members as well as (to the extent relevant) identify ways that the papers relate to one another.

If you would like to present a paper as part of a CRN panel, please make your submission here https://form.jotform.com/91827795835172. The submission form will ask you to provide:

·         A 500 word abstract or summary of your paper;

·         Your paper’s title

·         Your name and institutional affiliation;

·         Number of years you have been in teaching/working as a grad student; and

·         A list of your areas of interest and expertise within feminist legal theory.

Please note that for Author Meets Reader, Salon, or Roundtable sessions, organizers should provide a 500-word summary of the topic and the contributions they expect the proposed participants to make.

If you need to contact the CRN Planning Committee, please do so via  feministlegaltheory@gmail.com. (Please do not send submissions to individual committee members.) 

Please submit all proposals by Friday, September 20, 2019. Late proposals may not be considered for inclusion. This schedule will permit us to organize panels and submit them prior to the LSA’s deadline of November 6. In the past, we have accommodated as many panelists as possible, but have been unable to accept all proposals. If we are unable to accept your proposal for the CRN, we will notify you by early November so that you can submit an independent proposal to LSA.

We hope you’ll join us in Denver to share and discuss the scholarship in which we are all engaged and connect with others doing work on feminist legal theory.

Finally, please make sure to sign up for the Feminist Legal Theory Collaborative Research page on TWEN, as that is our primary platform for communication about the CRN’s activities.  If your primary academic affiliation is outside a U.S.-based law school, please contact Bridget Crawford (bcrawford@law.pace.edu), and she will arrange for you to have access to TWEN, if you provide your institutional email account.  The CRN welcomes participants from all parts of the academy.

Reminder: CFP for 2019 Graphic Justice Discussions: "Drawing the Human: Law, Comics, Justice" @LexComica

CALL FOR PAPERS – CLOSES SOON!

2019 Graphic Justice Discussions – “Drawing the Human: Law, Comics, Justice”

28-29 November 2019, USC, Queensland, Australia

The 2019 conference of the Graphic Justice Research Alliance will be hosted by the USC School of Law and Criminology, University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland Australia. The conference explores the theme Drawing the Human: Law, Comics, Justice and will run on the 28^th and 29^th November 2019.

The conference seeks to examine the role of comics, graphic novels and graphic art in constituting as well as critiquing law, rights and justice as they relate to and extend beyond the human. Proposals for papers and panels are welcome from academics, postgraduate students and artists from across a range of disciplines including law, criminology and justice, comics studies, visual and cultural studies and the humanities.

In addition, we are delighted to announce our confirmed keynotes:

• Dr Sonja Schillings, who will be speaking on Conditioning the Law: Nature and Nuclear Energy in the Comic Form
• Associate Professor Neal Curtis, who will be speaking on Redrawing the Lines: Superheroes as Law and Myth

Please see the attached call for papers which closes on the 31^st of August.

In addition, you can find more details at our conference website here.

We look forward to welcoming you to the Sunshine Coast in November.

Sincerely,

Timothy Peters, Dale Mitchell & Ashley Pearson

Conference Hosts – Drawing the Human: Law, Comics, Justice

CFP: 2019 Law, Literature & the Humanities Association of Australia Extended to August 31, 2019

From Dr. Timothy Peters, President, Law, Literature, & the Humanities Association of Australia:

The call for papers for the 2019 Law, Literature and the Humanities Association of Australasia Conference: Juris Apocalypse Now: Law in the End Times has been extended until 31st August 2019 (see attached). In addition, the application date for postgraduate bursaries has also been extended to 31st August. Please both distribute far and wide, and get your abstracts for panels and papers in now!

CFP: Volume on Law, Authorship, and Appropriation

Call for papers for a volume on law, authorship, and appropriation. We are seeking papers from 10,000 to 40,000 words on any aspect of law, authorship, and appropriation, including the intersection of freedom of expression and copyright, history of authorship, defenses to copyright infringement, appropriation vs. theft, plagiarism and originality in creation, cultural appropriation, digital sampling and the law, wearable technology and IP, and related topics. Do terms like "author" and "creator" continue to have meaning? Abstracts are due no later than September 30, 2019. Finished papers are due no later than January 1, 2020. If you are interested or have questions about the project, please contact Christine Corcos at ccorcos@lsu.edu.

CFP: 2019 Graphic Justice Disuccsions, USC, Queensland, Australia @usceduau @graogu @LexComica

From the emailbox:

2019 Graphic Justice Discussions – “Drawing the Human: Law, Comics Justice”28-29 November 2019, USC, Queensland, Australia The 2019 conference of the Graphic Justice Research Alliance will be hosted by the USC School of Law and Criminology, University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland Australia. The conference explores the theme Drawing the Human: Law, Comics, Justice and will run on the 28^th and 29^th November 2019. The conference seeks to examine the role of comics, graphic novels and graphic art in constituting as well as critiquing law, rights and justice as they relate to and extend beyond the human. Proposals for papers and panels are welcome from academics, postgraduate students and artists from across a range of disciplines including law, criminology and justice, comics studies, visual and cultural studies and the humanities. Please see the attached call for papers which closes on the 31stof August. We look forward to welcoming you to the Sunshine Coast in November. 

CFP: Law, Literature, and Human Rights, MLA Annual Convention, Seattle, January 9-12, 2020

From the mailbox:

Call for Papers: 

Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention, Seattle, January 9-12, 2020

Law, Literature, and Human Rights

Papers examining legal and literary articulations of human rights, broadly conceived, from Jus Gentium to the U.S. Constitution to the European Union. 250-500 word abstract and brief CV. 

Deadline for submissions: Sunday, 10 March 2019

Melissa J. Ganz, Marquette U (melissa.ganz@marquette.edu ); Christine L. Holbo, Arizona State U (christine.holbo@asu.edu )  

CFP: Islands and Remoteness in Geography, Law, and Fiction: Conference at the University of Verona, November 21-22, 2019

From the mailbox:

CFP:  Islands and Remoteness in Geography, Law, and Fiction, a conference convened by Matteo Nicolini, University of Verona, Law Department, and Thomas Perrin, UFR de Géographie et d’Aménagement, Université de Lille. The conference will take place at the University of Verona November 21-22, 2019.

The conference seeks to explore how, in many ways, islands appear to be “geographical
paradoxes”. Indeed, they are spatially remote places, which are, at the same time, bound to a continent by social conventions. The grounds of such puzzle are manifold. It is firstly a matter of spatial area. Secondly, the puzzle depends on how political power projects authority over circumscribed spatial realms, including non-continental realms. In so doing, authority forges the concepts of remoteness and bounds.

Proposals for papers are due by May 31, 2019 and should be sent to matteo.nicolini@univr.it and thomas.perrin@univ-lille.fr. Please also direct questions about the conference to them. They will make acceptances known by June 24, 2019.

The selected papers will be published in Pólemos – Journal of Law,
Literature and Culture,volume 14 (2020) Issue 2. The deadline for first draft papers submission is due by 15 January 2020.

For more information, see the link here. 

CFP: Special Workshop at the "Dignity, Diversity, Democracy" Conference of the International Association for the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, Lucerne, Switzerland, July 7-13, 2019

CFP for Special Workshop at the "Dignity, Diversity, Democracy" Conference (Annual Congress of the International Association for the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy) Lucerne, Switzerland, July 7-13, 2019 (at the University of Lucerne)

Special Workshop 48: Immigration & Nationalism: Finding Common Ground Between Narrative Extremes

Convenors: Andrew Majeske, Gilad Ben-Nun

Workshop Description: 

In the United States the contentious midterm elections of 2018 will occur shortly. The narratives dominating the public conversation in respect to immigration (currently in the news is the migrant caravan of Honduran refugees, and the move to restrict birth-right citizenship) and nationalism (“make American great again”, and “America first”) by all appearances are controlled respectively by the far right and the far left of the political spectrum. Certain it is that these more extreme narratives garner the bulk of mainstream media attention, and offer the least opportunity for identifying a common ground upon which productive public discussion can work to counter the fear-mongering and demonizing that constitute the core of these narratives. A similar dynamic has been playing out in many if not most of the nations that constitute the EU. 

It is the hope of the conveners that the papers that will be shared in this special workshop will work towards addressing , from the interdisciplinary standpoint of law, literature & culture, the problem of the missing middle, and to identify ways in which a different narrative can be structured that can either bridge the extremes of the political left and right, or if that is not feasible, to work towards creating a new narrative (or resurrecting an older one). This new or restored narrative must be one that creates a broad and stable middle ground, a middle-ground that highlights the core values of dignity, democracy & diversity, and the principles that support these values—namely, that the only legitimate government is one based on the consent of those governed, and its necessary analogue, that there is at the least a fundamental initial political equality of all persons. Whether this new or restored narrative will be of sufficient power and vitality to push the extreme narratives back to their native ground, the margins, is uncertain; but it is the position of the conveners that we have a duty to try. 

The conveners are therefore hopeful that given the myriad of perspectives and approaches that characterize the interdiscipline of law, literature & culture, that the workshop will be productive in identifying such new or restored narratives with which we can begin to confront what is presenting itself as the fundamental crisis of our times.  We trust that the urgency of establishing a trans-Atlantic (and hopefully even broader) dialogue on this theme is evident to all.

The special workshop will be held in English. 

If you are interested in presenting a paper in this workshop, please send a short abstract (max. 300 words) to the workshop conveners by January 31, 2019. Decisions will be made by February 28, 2019. Full papers will be circulated among the workshop participants approximately two weeks before the start of the conference. 

Conveners: 

Andrew Majeske (John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY), New York)

            ajmajeske@gmail.com

Bilad Ben-Nun (University of Leipzig)

            gilad.ben-nun@uni-leipzig.de