Law, Literature, and Humanities Association of Australia Awards 2017 Penny Pether Prize to Marco Wan For "Masculinity and the Trials of Modern Fiction" (Routledge, 2017) @routledgebooks

The Law, Literature, and Humanities Association of Australia has awarded the 2017 Penny Pether Prize to Marco Wan's Masculinity and the Trials of Modern Fiction (Routledge, 2016). Here's a description of the book's contents from the publisher's website.

How do lawyers, judges and jurors read novels? And what is at stake when literature and law confront each other in the courtroom? Nineteenth-century England and France are remembered for their active legal prosecution of literature, and this book examines the ways in which five novels were interpreted in the courtroom: Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Paul Bonnetain’s Charlot s’amuse, Henry Vizetelly’s English translation of Émile Zola’s La Terre, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. It argues that each of these novels attracted legal censure because they presented figures of sexual dissidence – the androgyne, the onanist or masturbator, the patricide, the homosexual and the lesbian – that called into question an increasingly fragile normative, middleclass masculinity. Offering close readings of the novels themselves, and of legal material from the proceedings, such as the trial transcripts and judicial opinions, the book addresses both the doctrinal dimensions of Victorian obscenity and censorship, as well as the reading practices at work in the courtroom. It situates the cases in their historical context, and highlights how each trial constitutes a scene of reading – an encounter between literature and the law – through which different forms of masculinity were shaped, bolstered or challenged.

Each year the Association awards the prize "to the author or authors whose book, in the judgment of the Committee, made the most significant contribution to the field of law, literature and humanities in Australasia."

 

Bruce Hay Wins Second Annual Penny Pether Award For Law and Language Scholarship

Amy Dillard, University of Baltimore School of Law, has announced:

On behalf of the award committee, it is my great pleasure to announce that Bruce Hay of Harvard Law School is the winner of the second annual Penny Pether Award for Law and Language Scholarship for his article The Damned Dolls, 26 Law and Literature 321 (2014).

Dozens of terrific articles and essays were nominated for the award.  In partial recognition of the strength and tremendous diversity of the works we were so lucky to read, we are also pleased to give honorable mention to Linda Edwards, Where Do the Prophets Stand?: Hamdi, Myth, and the Master’s Tools, 13 U. Conn. Pub. Int. L. J. 43 (2013). 

The committee thanks to everyone who nominated authors for the award and to the authors themselves for their great work.  We are proud to review this work in an annual way to honor the legacy of Professor Penny Pether.  Please watch for our announcement for nominations in the fall.

Amy Dillard

J. Amy Dillard
Associate Professor of Law
Univ. of Baltimore School of Law
1420 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21201

In Memoriam: Penelope Pether

We are saddened to report the passing of Penelope Pether, Professor of Law at Villanova University, and a former member of the Board of Governors of the Law and Humanities Institute. Professor Pether was a distinguished member of the legal academy, and a noted scholar in the areas of criminal law and constitutional law, as well as in law and literature.

Professor Pether received her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Sydney, and later her Ph.D. in English from the same university. In addition, she practiced as an attorney in Sydney, and then in the New South Wales Ombudsman's Office.

During her extensive academic career, Professor Pether taught at the Universities of Sydney and Wollongong, at Southern Illinois University Law School, at American University Law School, and finally at Villanova Law School. She was also a beloved teacher and mentor. Included in her extensive and influential bibliography are articles published in the Stanford Law Review, the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, the Washington & Lee Law Review, the Cardozo Law Review, the Sydney Law Review, Law & Critique, Law and Literature, Social Semiotics, and The Australian Feminist Law Journal. Her essays appear in collections published by such publishers as Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Edinburgh University Press. Lexis recently published the second edition of her Criminal Law casebook. She was also an editor of the SSRN online journal Law and Literature and the journal Law and Literature, and served on the editorial boards of the Waikato Law Review, Social Semiotics, and Law and Critique.

Professor Pether was also active in many conferences and associations, and was a gracious and generous colleague who made new members of the academy feel welcome in what can be a challenging environment. She was with us for far too short a time, and we will miss her.

Villanova Law School has published a remembrance of Professor Pether, with more information about her life and legacy, here.

Call For Papers

“LAW, LITERATURE & RELIGION”
ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS
FIRST ANNUAL VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW AND DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
LAW AND LITERATURE SYMPOSIUM
OCTOBER 1 – 3, 2009

Villanova’s Law School and Department of English will hold a law and literature symposium, the first in a projected annual series, beginning Thursday evening, October 1, 2009, and ending Saturday afternoon, October 3, 2009. The symposium has also been supported by a grant from the Law and Humanities Institute.

We invite interested scholars to submit abstracts of proposed papers. Peter Goodrich (Professor of Law and Director of Law and Humanities, Cardozo School of Law), Steven Mailloux (Professor of English and Chancellor’s Professor of Rhetoric, Department of English, University of California – Irvine), and Robin West (Associate Dean, Research and Academic Programs, and Frederick J. Haas Professor of Law and Philosophy, Georgetown University Law Center), will be keynote speakers.

The conference theme for 2009, “Law, Literature, and Religion”, is broadly conceived. Papers may include but are not limited to papers on any literary, rhetorical, narrative, or textual aspects of law and religion; the exegesis and hermeneutics of legal texts or topics; interpretation in law, literature, and religion; shared languages and histories of law and religion; discursive intersections of civil and canon law; ethics and justice explored in religious and secular literature; the comparative poetics or rhetoric of legality and religion; legal priesthoods; political theology; orthodoxies and/or heterodoxies; humanisms; Pauline studies; religious images in law; literary works about religion in/and/as law; and law as a civil religion. Papers will be 20-25 minutes long to permit time for discussion.

Abstracts of proposed papers should be sent to Professor Penelope Pether (pether at law.villanova.edu), to whom inquires may also be addressed. Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words, and should arrive before March 15, 2009. Invitees will be notified by April 30, 2009, and will receive room and board at (but not transportation to and from) the symposium, provided by Villanova University School of Law.

It is anticipated that a limited number of places will be available for attendees who are not presenting papers. The symposium is being convened by Professor David S. Caudill, Arthur M. Goldberg Family Chair in Law, and Professor Penelope J. Pether of Villanova University School of Law; and Professors Evan Radcliffe (Departmental Chair) and Cristina Maria Cervone of the Department of English at Villanova University.