Workshop on Understanding and Doing Equality: Building Synergies Between Arts and Human Rights

From Honor Tuohy, University of Galway:

Announcement of a workshop: Understanding and Doing Equality: Building Synergies between Arts and Human Rights

Workshop

Understanding and Doing Equality: Building Synergies between Arts and Human Rights

This is a one-day workshop on May 29th 2025 at the Centre for Advanced Study, Sofia, Bulgaria.

Call for contributors: 

This workshop aims to explore themes focusing on methodologies and approaches for the creation of synergies between arts (understood broadly) and the equality-oriented dimension of human rights. What uses of arts are particularly conducive to the sharing of lived experiences of disadvantage to evoke compassion and create mutual understanding? How can artistic means be used to communicate ideas about equality, including in their scientific complexity? What specific forms of artistic communication are most conducive to positive change?

A full outline of the workshop is available in the document attached. A 300 words abstract should be sent to the organisers by 30 April 2025.

Please contact Honor Tuohy (H.Tuohy3@universityofgalway.ie) or Ekaterina Yahyaoui (ekaterina.yahyaoui@universityofgalway.ie) for more information and/or see attached document.

 

Theme

Human rights and equality appear as ideals appealing to most if not all people across the globe. 

However, the way people understand and experience these ideals can vary significantly since even the 

most conserva=ve poli=cians or ac=vists use these ideals in some shape or form. This reveals 

complexity and mul=dimensionality of equality and human rights which o?en hampers efficient public 

debate, communica=on and mutual understanding. At the same =me, the concept of equality is the 

subject of philosophical and academic discussions of which many contain difficult and not immediately 

accessible language. The experience of (in)equality is also not immediately comprehensible by those 

who have not personally been vic=ms of any sort of discrimina=on.

Arts and various ar=s=c prac=ces – visual arts, performing arts, or literary arts – have long been 

recognised for their ability to document human rights abuses. Arts also play a role in increasing 

empathy, communica=ng feelings and emo=ons. Discussions about arts’ ability to contribute to 

building stronger communi=es, transla=ng human experiences and knowledge into a more accessible 

form, or ac=ng as a crea=ve force leading to posi=ve change in our socie=es are ongoing.

This workshop aims to explore further these themes focusing on methodologies and approaches for 

crea=on of synergies between arts (understood broadly) and the equality-oriented dimension human 

rights. What uses of arts are par=cularly conduc=ve to sharing of lived experiences of disadvantage 

to evoke compassion and create mutual understanding? How can ar=s=c means be used to communicate 

ideas about equality, including in their scien=fic complexity? What specific forms of ar=s=c 

communica=on are most conduc=ve to posi=ve change?

We invite papers on these and related ques=ons from scholars, ar=sts and ac=vists alike. Inter- and 

transdisciplinary approaches are the most welcome. Equally, we are looking for both theore=cally 

informed contribu=ons as well as empirically grounded work, including examples of successful novel 

synergies and collabora=ons.

About the workshop

The one-day workshop will be held on 29 May 2025 at the Centre for Advanced Study, Sofia Bulgaria. 

The par=cipants will be required to submit a 1000 words concept paper by 22 May 2025. While this 

will be an in-person workshop, online aWendance can be facilitated in jus=fied circumstances. The 

workshop will also serve as a form of feedback on future publishable outputs as the organisers aim 

to submit an edited volume proposal to a reputable publisher. Publica=on plans will be discussed 

during the workshop.

While the par=cipa=on in the workshop is free, the organisers are unable to cover any travel or 

accommoda=on expenses.

Submission process

Please  submit  a  300  words  abstract  to  the  organisers  Ekaterina  Yahyaoui 

(Ekaterina.yahyaoui@universityofgalway.ie) and Honor Tuohy (H.Tuohy3@universityofgalway.ie) (please 

use both emails) by 30 April 2025. Decisions will be communicated in the following week.

ICYMI: Dees on Great Trials and the Law in the Historical Imagination @routledgebooks

ICYMI: Russell L. Dees, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, has published Great Trials and the Law in the Historical Imagination: A Law and Humanities Approach (Routledge, 2024). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

Great Trials and the Law in the Historical Imagination: A Law and Humanities Approach introduces readers to the history of law and issues in historical, legal, and artistic interpretation by examining six well-known historical trials through works of art that portray them. Great Trials provides readers with an accessible, non-dogmatic introduction to the interdisciplinary ‘law and humanities’ approach to law, legal history, and legal interpretation. By examining how six famous/notorious trials in Western history have been portrayed in six major works of art, the book shows how issues of legal, historical, and artistic interpretation can become intertwined: the different ways we embed law in narrative, how we bring conscious and subconscious conceptions of history to our interpretation of law, and how aesthetic predilections and moral commitments to the law may influence our views of history. The book studies well-known depictions of the trials of Socrates, Cicero, Jesus, Thomas More, the Salem ‘witches’, and John Scopes and provides innovative analyses of those works. The epilogue examines how historical methodology and historical imagination are crucial to both our understanding of the law and our aesthetic choices through various readings of Harper Lee’s beloved character, Atticus Finch. The first book to employ a ‘law and humanities’ approach to delve into the institution of the trial, and what it means in different legal systems at different historical times, this book will appeal to academics, students and others with interests in legal history, law and popular culture and law and the humanities.

Peterson on The Fourteenth Amendment and the Venus Noire @UChicagoLaw @WMLawReview

Farah Peterson, University of Chicago Law School, has published The Fourteenth Amendment and the Vénus Noire at 66 William & Mary Law Review 191 (2024). Here is the abstract.

This Essay reflects on art to make two points. It first argues that originalism is not a promising path for progressive causes. It then argues that as the Constitution is amended, the meaning of the entire document is altered, and earlier text should be interpreted in light of what has changed.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Call For Applications, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies @IALS_law @anat_rosenberg

The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies is pleased to announce a call for Academic Visitors and Visiting Artists for the 2024-25 academic year. This is part of an exciting new initiative to develop the field of Law and the Humanities at IALS under the leadership of its new Professor, Dr Anat Rosenberg.

The deadline for applications is 8th September and further particulars can be found here: 

Call for Visitors 2024-25- early-mid career 

Call for Visitors 2024-25- PhD & Postdoc

Call for Visitors 2024-25- visiting artist
 

Newly Published: Haiyan Lee: A Certain Justice: Toward an Ecology of the Chinese Legal Imagination (University of Chicago Press) @UChicagoPress

Newly published:

Haiyan Lee, A Certain Justice: Toward an Ecology of the Chinese Legal Imagination (University of Chicago Press, 2023). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

To many outsiders, China has an image as a realm of Oriental despotism where law is at best window dressing and at worst an instrument of coercion and tyranny. In this highly original contribution to the interdisciplinary field of law and humanities, Haiyan Lee contends that this image arises from a skewed understanding of China’s political-legal culture, particularly the failure to distinguish what she calls high justice and low justice.

In the Chinese legal imagination, Lee shows, justice is a vertical concept, with low justice between individuals firmly subordinated to the high justice of the state. China’s political-legal culture is marked by a mistrust of law’s powers, and as a result, it privileges substantive over procedural justice. Calling on a wide array of narratives—stories of crime and punishment, subterfuge and exposé, guilt and redemption—A Certain Justice helps us recognize the fight for justice outside the familiar arenas of liberal democracy and the rule of law.

Where Law Meets the Humanities: Special Issue of Talking Humanities

 

 

Where Law Meets The Humanities. The contributors to this special issue of Talking Humanities provide an important sample of how the humanities provide a vital sensibility for cutting edge legal scholarship today. In his contribution (The humanities and law: more intertwined than you might think), David Sugarman explores the often uneasy and complex relationship between law and the humanities, and the growth and development of influences from the humanities within legal scholarship. Mara Malagodi (How legal briefs find new life in celluloid) focuses on the relationship between law and film, and its role in enabling our understanding of ‘justice’.  Jill Marshall (The power of listening: how survivors’ voices can transform human rights) explores the importance of narrative and storytelling in fostering a victim-centred approach to International Human Rights Law and International Criminal Law. Michael Thomson (From ‘heartbeats’ to bounty hunters – the legal complexities of abortion) situates the current American challenge to the constitutional right to abortion through a historical analysis of the relationship between law and medicine, while connecting this to the histories of slavery which continue to leave their imprint. The issue is introduced by Carl Stychin (Where law meets the humanities).

 

Canadian Network of Law & Humanities Launches; Check Out Its Website @LawHumanitiesCA

 The Canadian Network of Law & Humanities has launched. It brings together scholars "interested in the cultural, imaginative, and embodied aspects of law."

The CNLH tweets at @LawHumanitiesCA. 

Call For Applications, 2022 Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities, Tilburg University @TilburgU

 Here is a link to the Call for Applications for the 2022 Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities at Tilburg University (Netherlands). 

The fellowship aims to enable a junior scholar (PhD or postdoc level) to develop her or his research in the field of law and humanities during a visit to Tilburg. The application deadline is October 31, 2021. 

From Michiel Bot, Assistant Professor of Law and Humanities, Department of Public Law and Governance, Tilburg Law School, Program Director, Major Law in an International Context, University College Tilburg

Call For Papers Extended To September 6, 2021: LAW AND LOVE: IN AND BEYOND PANDEMIC TIMES

LAW AND LOVE:

IN AND BEYOND PANDEMIC TIMES

A VIRTUAL AND IN-PERSON CONFERENCE OF THE  

LAW, LITERATURE AND HUMANITIES ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALASIA 

MONDAY 29 NOVEMBER – THURSDAY 2 DECEMBER 2021 

UNIVERSITY OF THE SUNSHINE COAST, SIPPY DOWNS 

 

CALL FOR PAPERS DUE DATE EXTENDED TO 6 SEPTEMBER 2021

 

 

Dear Friends,

 

We hope this email finds you well in these difficult times.

 

We are absolutely delighted with the response to the call for papers to date – but we don’t want anybody to miss out on being able to submit a proposal for the conference. As such, we are extending the call for papers for the conference until the 6^th September 2021. We would also like to confirm that, subject to Covid-restrictions at the time, the conference will have both online and in-person attendance options for all the sessions – and there will be flexibility in changing attendance options if required.

 

For HDR/postgraduate students, the Association has a number of bursaries on offer – the closing date for these is still 31^st of August 2021.  Applications need to be submitted by email to kbirrell@unimelb.edu.au. Further information is available on the Association website here: https://www.lawlithum.org/postgraduate-bursaries/

 

We have a fantastic line-up of keynotes and plenaries in the works including:

• Keynote speaker: Associate Professor Ioannis Ziogas (Durham), author of Law and love in Ovid: Courting in the Age of Augustus
• Plenary Panel: “Loving and Not Loving Law” by Dr Maria Giannacopoulos (Flinders) and Dr Claire Loughnan (Melbourne)
• With more to come!

 

Registration for the conference will open shortly, but if you have not yet put in a paper or panel proposal – please do! Attached is the extended call for papers, and more information can be found at our conference website: www.usc.edu.au/lawandlove/

 

We look forward to seeing you (virtually or in-person) later this year.

 

Best wishes,

 

Dr Timothy Peters

 

On behalf of The Law and Love Conference Organising Committee

Jordan Belor, Vincent Goding, Dale Mitchell, Ashley Pearson, Timothy Peters, Justine Poon and Dyann Ross

School of Law and Society

University of the Sunshine Coast

Sippy Downs, Queensland, Australia

 

Zipporah B. Wiseman Prize for Scholarship on Law, Literature, and Justice: Writing Competition The Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas School of Law @UTexasLaw

 From the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice:

The Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas School of Law is proud to administer the Zipporah B. Wiseman Prize for Scholarship on Law, Literature, and Justice. Awarded to the winners of an annual international and multidisciplinary writing competition, the prize is made possible by donations from the friends, family, and colleagues of the late Zipporah Batshaw Wiseman, in honor of her important work at the intersection of law and literature.

TOPIC: We welcome papers from any discipline that engage both legal and literary methods or texts. For these purposes, literary texts include written and other narrative forms, such as film. Papers should use an interdisciplinary lens to explore issues of justice, broadly understood. The papers may work from any of a variety of perspectives: legal and literary, of course, but also philosophical, historical, sociological, political, economic, or cultural.

PRIZE: The winning paper will receive $1,250 and will be published in the Working Paper Series of the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice. A second-place prize of $750 might also be awarded, with the paper considered for publication in the Working Paper Series.

ELIGIBILITY: The prize is open to students currently enrolled in graduate or professional programs as well as to those who have graduated from such programs in or after May 2020. Papers must consist of original work, primarily undertaken as a student, that has not been published or undergone professional editing at the time of submission. Authors must have rights to the content and be willing to publish the paper in the Rapoport Center’s Working Paper Series shortly after the winner has been announced. If papers are later published in a journal or other edited collection, they may be replaced in the Working Paper Series with a citation to that publication.

JUDGMENT CRITERIA: An interdisciplinary and international panel of scholars will judge the papers anonymously. Relevant judgment factors include the strength and logic of the thesis, depth of the analysis, originality and importance of intervention, thoroughness and soundness of the research, and quality of writing (clarity and organization).

FORMAT: Papers must be between 8,000 and 12,000 words, including notes and appendices, and written in English. Text should be double-spaced, with 12-point font and 1-inch margins. Citational style should be disciplinarily appropriate. Via email, please submit, in three separate documents, the paper (without any identifying information), abstract (100 to 250 words), and full contact details (including university, degree, and anticipated/actual graduate date). Include “Zipporah Wiseman Prize” in the subject line of the email. All submissions must be submitted in .doc or .docx format.

DEADLINE: June 15, 2021, 11:59 p.m. (CT).  Submissions should be sent via email to humanrights@law.utexas.edu.

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)

Ramshaw on Law and Humanities: A Field Without a Canon @UVicLaw

Sara Ramshaw, University of Victoria Faculty of Law, has published Law and Humanities: A Field Without a Canon. Here is the abstract.

This short Commentary imagines law and humanities not as a “canon” per se, but as a “field without a canon”; or a canon that resists canonization. Arts-based practices utilized in legal research and teaching expose the law and humanities “canon” to its dual (and somewhat contradictory) nature: ever straining towards a pre-established archive, it must also leap ahead fearlessly to properly defy disciplinary boundaries and move the field beyond siloed thinking, which is one of the preliminary aims of law and humanities scholarship and pedagogy. Arts-based practices consist not of a stable collection of set texts, but instead signify a process of experimentation that is ever in flux and alive to possibility. It is this process of discovering new arts-based practices that ensures law and humanities remains a vibrant, yet ever-changing, field for years to come. To that end, this Commentary surveys a sampling of outsider approaches to law and humanities scholarship and pedagogy, those more concerned with process than product, and which are coming from outside of or beyond the more traditionally conceived canon of law and humanities. These approaches fall into two broad categories: (1) arts-based scholarly legal practices; and (2) arts-based legal pedagogical practices. A uniting feature of both these approaches is that they are being undertaken and explored by Canadian legal scholars at a small law school on Vancouver Island on the West Coast of Canada, namely the University of Victoria Faculty of Law, where there is an impressive number of faculty members using arts-based practices in their research and teaching.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Law and Humanities Roundtable 2020: Call For Papers, University of Southampton, Friday, July 3, 2020

Law and Humanities Roundtable 2020

CALL FOR PAPERS

University of Southampton, Friday, July 3, 2020 Theme: Law, the Senses and Beyond

This second annual Law and Humanities roundtable invites original paper presentations on the relationship between law and the senses, marking 250 years since the birth of Beethoven. Beethoven’s life and music are marked by acute ambivalences towards political power (initially dedicating his Symphony No.3 to Napoléon Bonaparte and then furiously withdrawing that dedication upon learning that Napoleon had declared himself ‘Emperor’), and towards community and social norms (the composer was [in Goethe’s words] ‘an utterly untamed personality’ who often found ‘the world detestable’ but nevertheless joyfully celebrated solidarity in the choral refrain of his Ninth Symphony – now the anthem of the European Union), as well as by uncanny triumph over his own sensory deprivation in his later years. All of these represent a timely provocation to scholars to reflect on how we experience law, justice and power: about the role and limitations of the senses in this regard, and the ways that law signifies beyond that which can be seen, heard, touched, felt and smelled.

Therefore, interdisciplinary humanities-focused paper presentations are invited for an intimate roundtable event on themes that speak to notions of, for example:

-   Law and acoustics: what can be heard, and not heard, in legal proceedings?

              -  Legal vistas, signs and symbolism: which aspects of law are conspicuous by their visibility, and which by their invisibility?

-          Law and touch: how does law physically touch us (roughly or otherwise), and in what ways does it physically withdraw?

-          Law’s taste and its smell: is it the fine red wine on a judge’s dining table, or the salt spray on a boat carrying undocumented migrants?

If you would like to present a paper at this workshop, please send your title and abstract (up to 500 words) by Friday 13th December 2019 to David Gurnham (School of Law, University of Southampton - d.gurnham@soton.ac.uk), Stephanie Jones (Department of English, Southampton - S.J.Jones@soton.ac.uk), or Gary Watt (School of Law, University of Warwick -g.watt@warwick.ac.uk).

Law and Humanities also welcomes submissions of full-length articles, and the editors are happy to discuss with presenters at this workshop how their piece might be worked up for submission. Please note however that publication cannot be guaranteed since all submissions are peer reviewed.

Reminder: Law and Humanities Roundtable: June 29, 2019

Reminder:

Law and Humanities Roundtable 2019

29 June, University of Warwick

The interdisciplinary arena of law and humanities is a rich and developing area of scholarship, with an international and diverse field of academics and thinkers at work within it. It is also an area that is characterised by an openness to innovation and new voices, and an expansive understanding of the value of humanities methodologies and sources as part of the ecology of legal discourse. The aim of this on-going annual roundtable is in part to provide a platform for, and thereby showcase, those working in law and humanities, but in particular to promote conversation and reflection between different approaches, methods, and voices within the range of law and humanities work. At its inception, the event is intended to be both expressive of contemporary law and humanities and reflexive in terms of law and humanities as a disciplinary phenomenon. Participants are encouraged not only to communicate and share the substance of their own work, but also to engage in contemplative discussion around the values, histories, methods, and possible futures of law and humanities within and beyond the global legal academy.

The roundtable is associated with the journal Law and Humanities, and is organised by members of its editorial board with financial support from Routledge.

Confirmed Speakers

• Angela Condello (University of Roma Tre)
• Sophie Doherty (Durham University)
• Jeanne Gaakeer (Erasmus School of Law)
• David Gurnham (University of Southampton)
• Golnar Nabizadeh (University of Dundee)
• Sophie Rigney (University of Dundee)

Click for: Programme and Abstracts.

For more information, please contact Thomas Giddens (t.giddens@dundee.ac.uk).

How to get to Warwick: https://warwick.ac.uk/about/visiting/

Law and Humanities Roundtable 2019 To Be Held June 29 at the University of Warwick @ThomGiddens @routledgebooks

From the email box:

Law and Humanities Roundtable 2019

29 June, University of Warwick

The interdisciplinary arena of law and humanities is a rich and developing area of scholarship, with an international and diverse field of academics and thinkers at work within it. It is also an area that is characterised by an openness to innovation and new voices, and an expansive understanding of the value of humanities methodologies and sources as part of the ecology of legal discourse. The aim of this on-going annual roundtable is in part to provide a platform for, and thereby showcase, those working in law and humanities, but in particular to promote conversation and reflection between different approaches, methods, and voices within the range of law and humanities work. At its inception, the event is intended to be both expressive of contemporary law and humanities and reflexive in terms of law and humanities as a disciplinary phenomenon. Participants are encouraged not only to communicate and share the substance of their own work, but also to engage in contemplative discussion around the values, histories, methods, and possible futures of law and humanities within and beyond the global legal academy.

The roundtable is associated with the journal Law and Humanities, and is organised by members of its editorial board with financial support from Routledge.

For more information, please contact Thomas Giddens (t.giddens@dundee.ac.uk).

Confirmed Speakers

Angela Condello (University of Roma Tre)

Sophie Doherty (Durham University)

Jeanne Gaakeer (Erasmus School of Law)

David Gurnham (University of Southampton)

Golnar Nabizadeh (University of Dundee)

Sophie Rigney (University of Dundee)

Booking will be open soon; Eventbrite details to follow.

A New Book From François Ost: Le droit: objet de passions? @jcalvo11

Via the blog Iurisdictio-Lex Malacitana, news of a new publication from François Ost: Le droit: objet de passions? (Academie royal de Belgique, 2018).

Professor Ost is also the author of Raconter la loi (Odile Jacob, 2004), Sade et la loi (Odile Jacob, 2005), and Shakespeare, la comédie de la loi (Michalon, 2012).

Law and Humanities Conference, May 18-19, 2018, Stanford Law School

Stanford Law School is hosting a law and humanities conference, May 18-19.  Here is a link to the agenda, which features, among many other leading scholars, Simon Stern, Bernadette Meyler, Christopher Tomlins, Christopher Warren, Robert Spoo, Bennett Capers, Suzanne Keen, and Nomi Stolzenberg.

Looks like a wonderful event.

CFP: Law and Humanities Forum of the MLA Plans Session on Literature, Law, and Violence at Next Year's Convention @MLANews

The Law and Humanities Forum of the Modern Language Association is sponsoring a guaranteed session on "Literature, Law, and Violence" at next year's MLA convention in Chicago (January 3-6, 2019).  We invite papers examining the relationship between law and violence in literary or legal texts from any period and all regions of the world.  

Here is a link to the CFP, as listed on the MLA website, with contact information. Please send 250-500 word abstracts and brief CV  by March 13, 2018 to Melissa J. Ganz (melissa.ganz@marquette.edu).

 ---

Melissa J. Ganz
Assistant Professor of English
Marquette University
Marquette Hall 226
Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881

Colloquium: Law In/And/As Performance, March 24, 2018, University of Warwick @warwickuni @thomgiddens

Law In / And / As Performance Colloquium

March 24th 2018, 9.45am-4.15pm

Law In/And/As Performance is a one-day interdisciplinary research colloquium for those with an interest in the intersections of law and performance.

This one-day event will bring together researchers and practitioners across a range of disciplines to explore the current work being done in the field of law in/and/as performance. The programme will include keynote speakers, alongside panels exploring research and practice into law in/and/as performance.

Keynote speakers: 
Dr Kate Leader (University of York)
Dr Kate Leader is a Lecturer at York Law School with a PhD in Performance Studies entitled ‘Trials, Truth-Telling and the Performing Body’ (2008), a PhD in Law and an LLM in Criminal Law and Criminal Justice. Prior to her current post, she was an Associate Lecturer in Criminology and Theatre Studies at Birkbeck.

Prof Alan Read (King’s College London)
Prof Alan Read is Professor of Theatre and Director of the Performance Foundation at Kings College London and is the author of Theatre & Law (2016). His other publications include Theatre & Everyday Life (1993) and Theatre in the Expanded Field (2014).

Panellists: 
Prof Peter Robson (University of Strathclyde)
Dr Maria Estrada-Fuentes (University of Warwick)
Dr Lucy Finchett-Maddock (University of Sussex)
Carey Young (University College London)
Yvonne Salmon (University of Cambridge)
Anna MacDonald (Manchester Metropolitan University)

Location: 
Humanities Building, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL

Registrations: 
Register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/law-in-and-as-performance-tickets-43343218734 

Queries: 
Please email Sean Mulcahy at sean.mulcahy@warwick.ac.uk 

Island and Mainland: Perspectives on Law and Humanities, Conference at St. Mary's University, February 27, 2018 @thomgiddens

Via @thomgiddens:

Registration now open:  Perspectives on Law and Humanities, February 27, 2018: St. Mary's University, London.

Island and Mainland: Perspectives on Law and HumanitiesCentre for Law and Culture
St Mary’s University
27 February 2018
The scholarly practices of law and humanities are far from unitary. Law and humanities has different styles, variable approaches, multiple concerns, hazy limits, moveable foundations. It cannot be stratified into a singular order of knowing—be it legal or humanistic. But it might be said to have something to do with reacting against the black letter techniques and ideals that have emerged to dominate recent forms of legal scholarship and pedagogy. It might also be said to have something to do with wider traditions of meaning-making and ethical reflection—traditions that are by no means exclusive to a legal realm of activities (if we can delineate such a realm). It might also be said to be connected with analysis of the various and plural forms of normative orders that populate contemporary societies. Terms like ‘materiality’, ‘form’, ‘culture’, and ‘critique’ appear relevant, but perhaps not determinative or exhaustive.
Amidst these shifting imaginaries of what constitutes law and humanities, it might be possible to pick out certain traditions of thought, specific styles of engagement. These approaches—be they branded ‘law, culture, and the humanities’, ‘cultural legal studies’, or ‘law and humanities’—might even be said to have geographic progeny, with their scope and language somehow seeming to be dependent upon whether they emerged on an island or a mainland. This metaphor of island and mainland (although perhaps not a metaphor) is distinctly Eurocentric, but the island in question perhaps thinks of itself as not quite part of any particular continent. Thus, the study of law and humanities in England takes on ‘Anglo-American’ stylings. The mainland, meanwhile, has a ‘continental’ feel—whatever that might mean. And what of the antipodean ‘cultural legal studies’ that emerges from a further geographic remove from both island and mainland? Is this, too, an identifiable style of legal humanities thinking?
Such provocations no doubt produce responses, disagreements, accusations of generalisation, of overlooking cross-pollinations and—from certain viewpoints—the arbitrariness of all boundaries and categories. Perhaps. Perhaps we should talk through such complexities, with conversations between and about different perspectives on law and humanities, from those inhabiting and hailing from various islands and mainlands. For the scholarly practices of law and humanities—whilst variable, moveable, and multiple—are of huge value in a world that seems, perhaps, to be forgetting something important.
Draft programme:0945 - 1000: Welcome and Tea/Coffee
1000 - 1200: Session 1
Emanuele Conte
Connal Parsley
Discussant: Thomas Giddens
1200 - 1230: Lunch
1230 - 1430: Session 2
Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos
Anne Wagner
Discussant: Angela Condello
1430 - 1500: Tea/Coffee
1500 - 1700: Session 3
Angela Condello
Thomas Giddens
Discussant: Luke Mason
End: 1700