Here's an announcement for an intriguing-looking conference:
ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF LAW, CULTURE, AND THE HUMANITIES
Eighth Annual Conference
March 11-12, 2005
Sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts, The University of Texas at Austin
We are pleased to announce that the Eighth Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities will be held in Austin, Texas, March 11-12, 2005. We invite your participation.
The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities is an organization of scholars engaged in interdisciplinary, humanistically-oriented legal scholarship. The Association brings together a wide range of people engaged in scholarship on legal history, legal theory and jurisprudence, law and cultural studies, law and literature, law and the performing arts, and legal hermeneutics. We want to encourage dialogue across and among these fields about issues of interpretation, identity, and values, about authority, obligation, and justice, and about law's place in culture.
Examples of the types of sessions we expect to organize include:
History, Memory and Law; Reading Race; Law and Literature; Human Rights and Cultural Pluralism; Speech, Silence, and the Language of Law; Judgment, Justice, and Law; Beyond Identity; The Idea of Practice in Legal Thought; Metaphor and Meaning; Representing Legality in Film and Mass Media; Anarchy, Liberty and Law; What is Excellence in Interpretation?; Ethics, Religion, and Law; Moral Obligation and Legal Life; The Post-Colonial in Literary and Legal Study; Processes and Possibilities in Interdisciplinary Law Teaching
This list is by no means exclusive. We invite scholars with interests across the range of areas in Law, Culture and the Humanities to organize panels, to submit proposals for individual paper presentations, and/or to indicate their interest in serving as chair/discussant. We welcome volunteers for chairs and discussants from people who are not submitting proposals for papers. If you would like to be a chair/discussant please submit a one-paragraph description of your interests/area of expertise along with your Name, Address, Phone, Fax, and e-mail.
We urge those interested in attending to consider submitting complete panels, and we hope to encourage a variety of formats-roundtables, sessions at which everyone reads the papers in advance, sessions in which commentators respond to a single paper. We invite proposals for sessions in which the focus is on pedagogy or methodology, for author-meets-readers sessions organized around important books in the field, or for sessions in which participants focus on performance (theatrical, filmic, musical, poetic).
Proposal Submissions
Proposals must contain the following information:
· Name, Address, Phone, Fax, and e-mail
· Title of paper (where applicable)
· A brief abstract (of up to150 words, to be included in the conference program)
· A statement of up to 1000 words explaining what you would like to present and why it is important in interdisciplinary studies of law, culture and the humanities
In the case of full panel proposals, all of this information should be supplied for each participant. Please make sure that your proposal is complete before you send it in. If you would be willing to serve as a chair/discussant please indicate that on your proposal.
Please submit proposals via e-mail, NO LATER THAN October 1, 2004 to Professor Susan Sage Heinzelman at [email protected]. Those submitting proposals can expect to receive a response in December. We cannot promise that we will be able to accommodate all proposals.
Registration and hotel information as well as a preliminary program will be mailed in early January 2005.
* * * * *
ASLCH Organizing Committee:
Susan Sage Heinzelman, English/Women and Gender Studies, University of Texas (President); Anita Allen-Castelitto, Law, University of Pennsylvania (Secretary); Robin West, Law, Georgetown University (Treasurer); Paul Schiff Berman, Law, University of Connecticut; Jennifer Culbert, Political Science, Johns Hopkins University; Peter Fitzpatrick, Law, Birkbeck College, University of London; Nasser Hussain, Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought, Amherst College; Pnina Lahav, Law, Boston University; Naomi Mezey, Law, Georgetown University; Harriet Murav, Russian, University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana; Austin Sarat, Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought, Amherst College (Editor, Law, Culture and Humanities); Hilary Schor, English, University of Southern California; Madhavi Sunder, Law, University of California, Davis; James Boyd White, Law and English, University of Michigan.
Rick
As we prepare to celebrate the 4th of July and "freedom," the Canticle of Zechariah (Luke 1:68-79; Gospel Canticle for Morning Prayer, Liturgy of the Hours) proclaims the source of our freedom: "Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; he has come to his people and set them free. He has raised up for us a mighty savior, born of the house of his servent David. Through his holy prophets he promised of old that he would save us from our enemies, from the hands of all who hate us. This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham: to set us free from our enemies, free to worship him without fear, holy and righteous in his sight all the days of our life. You my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way, to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins. In the tender compassion of our God the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace."
[The item below is from today's online edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education.]
European Court Upholds Turkey's Ban on Student Headscarfs
By AISHA LABI
A Turkish medical student has lost her bid to be able to wear a headscarf while pursuing studies at the University of Istanbul. In a potentially precedent-setting decision, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that Leyla Sahin's rights to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion were not violated by Turkey's ban on students' wearing overtly religious garb at public universities.
"Measures taken in universities to prevent certain fundamentalist religious movements from pressuring students who do not practice the religion in question or those belonging to another religion can be justified," the panel of seven judges said in a unanimous ruling. Ms. Sahin is an observant Muslim who wears a headscarf because of her religious beliefs.
One of her lawyers said the ruling reflected the judges' preoccupation with "not strictly legal considerations."
"The big message is that the European Court of Human Rights has largely left it to states to decide whether they consider it necessary to forbid wearing of signs of religion in educational establishments in order to preserve secularity and religious neutrality," said Stephen Grosz, a human-rights lawyer in London who worked with Turkish lawyers on the case.
Other human-rights advocates also criticized the decision. "The ruling is a real disappointment, but not entirely surprising," said Rachel Denber of Human Rights Watch.
The court framed its ruling as a defense of secularism, but Ms. Denber said that the decision would in fact foster religious separatism. "It's not clear why this is supposed to encourage pluralism," she said. "It's going to push women into separate institutions or force them to abandon what they consider to be their religious obligations."
Turkey is predominantly Muslim, but since the founding of the modern Turkish state 80 years ago, its military has been an overwhelming force for secularism. In recent years, however, the balance between religion and secularism has shifted with successive governments. The current prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is himself an observant Muslim whose wife -- like most wives of members of his cabinet -- wears a headscarf.
Since the early 1980s, Turkish law has required students to dress according to the rules covering civil servants. "If applied uniformly, the code would also forbid women students from wearing miniskirts and jeans, but the prohibition is applied arbitrarily to the headscarf alone," according to a report published this week by Human Rights Watch.
The report, in the form of a memorandum to the Turkish government, goes on to note that despite the law, universities enforced the headscarf ban only sporadically until 1997. Following the installation of a new secular government that year, the military issued an ultimatum demanding that civilian authorities such as universities carry out the ban without exception.
As a result, thousands of women have had their access to higher education curtailed, said Jonathan Sugden, a researcher on Turkey for Human Rights Watch and the author of this week's report. Women who choose to cover their head, he said, "either can't get into university or are expelled, or they're forced to do things like wear the scarf under a wig."
Wearing the scarf under a wig is "quite a common practice," he said, "but in some universities that's not even allowed. I've spoken to women who said that they've had professors actually coming to them and lifting up the front of their hair to see if there's a scarf underneath."
In February 1998, the vice chancellor of the University of Istanbul issued a directive instructing staff members to turn away students wearing headscarfs or beards from lectures, courses, and tutorials. A month later, Ms. Sahin, then a fifth-year medical student, was refused entry to an examination because she was wearing a headscarf. She was later denied access to a course because of her insistence on wearing it. Ms. Sahin subsequently left Turkey and has been pursuing her medical studies at the University of Vienna since 1999.
Mr. Grosz said that he and Ms. Sahin's other lawyers plan to appeal the ruling. The appeal is likely to be heard by the court's appellate grand chamber within the next 18 months.
The European Court of Human Rights, which is based in Strasbourg, France, was established by the Council of Europe, a political organization of 45 member nations.
Turkey is the only member of the council with an across-the-board ban on headscarfs at universities. But the ruling could have broad implications for other member countries, where the court's rulings take precedence over national courts. In France, Germany, and the Netherlands, for example, the wearing of headscarfs in public educational institutions has also become a controversial issue.
