Law and Humanities Junior Scholar Workshop Call For Papers

From Susan Sage Heinzelman, University of Texas, Austin:

CALL FOR PAPERS - Law & Humanities Junior Scholar Workshop

The University of Southern California Center for Law, History & Culture, UCLA School of Law, Columbia Law School, and Georgetown University Law School invite submissions for the tenth meeting of the Law & Humanities Junior Scholar Workshop to be held at USC School of Law in Los Angeles, CA on June 8 & 9, 2014. 

PAPER COMPETITION:

The paper competition is open to untenured professors, advanced graduate students, and post-doctoral scholars in law and the humanities; in addition to drawing from numerous humanistic fields, we welcome critical, qualitative work in the social sciences.  Based on anonymous evaluation by an interdisciplinary selection committee, between five and ten papers will be chosen for presentation at the June Workshop.  At the Workshop, two senior scholars will comment on each paper.  Commentators and other Workshop participants will be asked to focus specifically on the strengths and weaknesses of the selected scholarly projects, with respect to subject and methodology. The selected papers will then serve as the basis for a larger conversation among all the participants about the evolving standards by which we judge excellence and creativity in interdisciplinary scholarship, as well as about the nature of interdisciplinarity itself.

Papers should be works-in-progress between 10,000 and 15,000 words in length (including footnotes/endnotes), and must include an abstract of no more than 200 words.  A dissertation chapter may be submitted, but we strongly suggest that it be edited so that it stands alone as a piece of work with its own integrity.  A paper that has been submitted for publication is eligible so long as it will not be in galley proofs or in print at the time of the Workshop.  The selected papers will appear in a special issue of the Legal Scholarship Network; there is no other publication commitment.  The Workshop will pay the travel and hotel expenses of authors whose papers are selected for presentation. Submissions (in Word, no pdf files) will be accepted until January 6, 2014, and should be sent by e-mail to:
 Center for the Study of Law and Culture,culture@law.columbia.edu
.

Please be sure to include your name, institutional affiliation (if any), telephone and e-mail contact information.  For more information contact Cindy Gao, 212.854.0167 or culture@law.columbia.edu, and to see past winners go to: http://www.law.columbia.edu/center_program/law_culture/lh_workshop. Anne DaileyKatherine FrankeAriela GrossNaomi MezeyPaul Saint-AmourHilary SchorClyde SpillengerNomi StolzenbergConveners 

A New Issue of Law and Humanities

Hart Publishing announces:

The contents of Law and Humanities Volume 7. Number 1. 2013. To access this issue online, read the abstracts and purchase individual papers please click here.To subscribeand for further information about Law and Humanities, please click here.  CONTENTS EditorialFree to view – please click here Articles‘The Cutting Edge of Cocking About’: Top Gear, Automobility and LawKieran Tranter and Damien Martin
Abstract: This paper argues that the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) television series Top Gear(2002-) presents a significant opportunity to think about automobility, masculinity and law. As a show about cars and car culture it can be seen, and dismissed, as a gratuitous celebration of 'combustion masculinity.' However, its irony, humour and nostalgia combine to highlight that this way of being male lies in the past. Focusing on Top Gear series 13 (June-August 2009) it is argued that the essence of combustion masculinity lies not only in risk and competition but law. However, the show goes further. In its excessive performance of combustion masculinity it engages in gentle critique. In the post-industrial era where the motor vehicle's cultural status is declining Top Gear is itself a vehicle allowing combustion masculinity to be overtaken by less risky, less violent and more lawful ways of being male.
Click here to purchase paper Oaths, Credibility and the Legal Process in Early Modern England: Part TwoBarbara J ShapiroAbstract: This is the second part of an article, Part One of which appeared in the December 2012 issue of Law and Humanities. Part One broadened the scope of the study of the law of evidence by examining the whole range of fact-taking practices in early modern English society as a necessary background to understanding how oaths functioned in the legal evidentiary environment. It questioned the argument of George Fisher that contemporary belief in the divine power of the oath to compel truthful testimony pressed the legal system to avoid the credibility conflicts that would be generated by competing oaths. Shapiro examined how oath-taking by witnesses interacted with the oaths of grand jurors and petit jurors as well as with oath-taking outside the legal setting. The latter portion of Part One began an extensive analysis of credibility issues, suggesting that the frequent expression of credibility concerns at the time undermined the view that oath-takers were almost uniformly believed to be truth-tellers. Part Two aims to broaden the scope of the credibility issue, looking beyond the formal juridical context of the jury trial to the employment of credibility criteria in a wide variety of cultural arenas; thereby demonstrating that legal and non-legal discussions of credibility invariably overlapped and intertwined.
Click here to purchase paper Towards a Critique of Narrative ReasonFrançois Ost
Abstract: This paper aims to rehabilitate the role of narrative, against the dominant strategy of thinking, which disqualifies it. We have grown up with stories, which makes this plea easy: they are all around, nurturing us and arousing general sympathy amongst the doxa. But at the same time, the prevailing doctrine tends to discredit narrative, presenting it as private and frivolous in order to constrain its powers. I would like to demonstrate the constitutive nature of narrative both as the collective story, memory and history of peoples, and as the individual or 'personal novel' each one of us tells himself in order to create his own identity. I analyse the repression and disqualifications of narrative, before revealing the ways in which both theoretical and practical reason arise from within our narrative imagination. This conception of the human as homo fabulans (or story-telling animal) could lead us to outline a 'Critique of Narrative Reason'.
Click here to purchase paper Recovering the Lost Human Stories of Law: Finding Mrs BurnsDawn Watkins
Abstract: This paper adopts a narrative approach as a means to investigating a well-known English civil law case; Burns v Burns [1984] Ch 317. It seeks to demonstrate some of the consequences of the 'we' and 'they' distinction that characterises much legal practice and discourse. In particular, it is argued that the identity of 'Mrs Burns', as revealed in the reported 'facts of the case' and scrutinised in subsequent legal discourse, is merely our distorted creation. Nevertheless, we continue to refer to the reported judgment as the ultimate source of authority of these 'facts' and we persist in pretending to ourselves that Mrs Burns was intimately involved in the establishment of them. Drawing on Delgado's 'plea for narrative', Mrs Burns' own counterstory is presented here as a both as challenge to our usual ways of thinking and as a belated 'gesture of responsibility' towards her.
Click here to purchase paper Lost for Words: Embodying Law through Tanztheater
Miriam Aziz
Abstract: What is the link between dance and the law? In my opinion, dance is also a way of seeing, a way of experiencing life; it is a story-telling device and is as variable as the many reasons why we dance. Both law and dance are theories of language. My interest as a lawyer and as an artist in exploring the link stems from there. To what extent, if at all, does this link enable us to examine the many ways we perceive law as an art of story-telling? What does it have to offer, if anything, about revising ideas about what we mean when we lay claim to translating ideas about social justice into laws? In 2011, I established a performance art laboratory called Artist (s) at Large to explore ideas about law and rule based approaches to creativity as well as copyright and authorship. The lab was also conceived as a creative platform for law teaching, thereby adapting the case-method. On 20 October, I premiered a performance piece called "Lost for Words" at the DiMenna Center with Artist (s) at Large which explored ideas of witness, testimony, truth and reconciliation with and beyond text. This paper places this experience within the context of a research and teaching agenda that is both innovative and imaginative, and has consequences for legal theory, legal practice, scholarship and teaching.
Click here to purchase paper Book ReviewsJulen Etxabe, The Experience of Tragic Judgment
Ari Hirvonen
Click here to purchase paper Ruth Herz, The Art of Justice: The Judge’s Perspective
Leslie J Moran, Gary Watt, Linda Mulcahy and David Isaac
Click here to purchase paper If you have any questions please contact Hart Publishing, 16C Worcester Place, Oxford OX1 2JW, UK Tel: +44 (0) 1865 517530; Fax: +44 (0) 1865 510710; Email: jo@hartpub.co.uk