For junior law & humanities scholars: This conference is a great way to get serious input on your work-in-progress, and to get to know other interesting people in the field. Highly recommended!
UCLA School of Law, Columbia Law School, University of Southern California Center for Law, History & Culture, and Georgetown University Law Center invite submissions for the sixth meeting of the Law & Humanities Junior Scholar Workshop to be held at UCLA Law School in Los Angeles, CA on June 8 & 9, 2008.
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 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 as 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 expenses of authors whose papers are selected for presentation.
Submissions (in either Word or Wordperfect, no pdf files) will be accepted until January 8, 2008, and should be sent by e-mail to:
Center for the Study of Law and Culture
culture@law.columbia.edu
Columbia Law School
435 W. 116th Street
New York, N.Y. 10027
Please be sure to include your contact information.
For more information: Manissa Maharawal, 212.854.2511 or culture@law.columbia.edu. The full text of the Call for Papers is available here.
Tips from the LHB: The blind-review process is rigorous. Be sure your paper is in just the right shape before submitting (e.g. pay attention to the comment about dissertation chapters), and if possible have someone else look at it for you before you submit. Historians: don't forget about the theory/argument. Don't assume the reader will understand the importance of what you've uncovered -- explain why it matters. And show off your research in the notes. Send in your best work.
