Columbia, USC & Georgetown

Law & Humanities Interdisciplinary Junior Scholar Workshop

Call for Papers

Columbia Law School, University of Southern California Center for Law, History & Culture, and Georgetown

University Law Center invite submissions for the second annual meeting of the Law & Humanities Junior Scholar Workshop to be held at Columbia Law School in New York City on June 1 -2, 2003.

WORKSHOP OBJECTIVES:

The Workshop's objectives are three-fold. First, the primary aim is to encourage and support young scholars doing critical, interdisciplinary
work in law, culture and the humanities. In this respect, the Workshop will serve as a forum in which young scholars can develop and refine their work in conversation with more senior scholars. Second, our objective is to create an ongoing set of conversations among a diverse group of junior and senior scholars about the nature of and challenges inherent in interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching. For example, our hope is to use the discussion of works-in-progress by newer scholars to think critically about the current and future goals of interdisciplinarity: Is it the juxtaposition of different disciplinary concerns and approaches or is it a more radical and precarious rejection of disciplinary rules and conventions? Third, the Workshop will seek to provide and promote an environment for building intellectual community among junior and senior scholars across disciplines.

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, the Workshop welcomes critical, qualitative work in the social sciences. Between five and ten papers will be chosen, based on anonymous evaluation by an interdisciplinary selection committee, 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. Moreover, 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 30 and 60 double-spaced pages in length. A paper that has been submitted for publication is eligible, but will be disqualified if it is 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 expenses of authors whose papers are selected for presentation.

CONVENERS:

Katherine Franke, Columbia Law School; Ariela Gross, USC Law School; Naomi Mezey, Georgetown University Law Center.

REFEREES & COMMENTATORS have included:

Jack Balkin, David Cruz, Catherine Fisk, Katherine Franke, Howard Gillman, David Theo Goldberg, Laura Gomez, Nan Goodman, Sarah Barringer Gordon, Carol Greenhouse, Ariela Gross, Cheryl Harris, Greg Keating, Mark Kelman, Dan Klerman, Sanford Levinson, David Luban, Robert Post, Margaret Jane Radin, Annelise Riles, Mark Rose, Clyde Spillenger, Nomi Stolzenberg, Kendall Thomas, Austin Sarat, Hilary Schor, Reva Siegel, Robert Weisberg.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE:

Submissions will be accepted until January 10, 2003, and should be sent (preferably by e-mail) to:

Please also include your contact information with your submission.

Center for the Study of Law and Culture
Columbia Law School
435 W. 116th Street
New York, N.Y. 10027
For more information: Jinah Paek, 212.854.2511,
www.law.columbia.edu/law&culture or culture@law.columbia.edu