Pierre Schlag, Colorado Law, has posted a wickedly funny essay on
The Faculty Workshop. Among its virtues is its capturing of a certain awkwardness that sometimes transpires when historians present to law faculties:
Then there are, of course, the historians. I’m always mildly amused by (though also empathetic towards) the historians. They have a devil of a time because no one else knows how to engage with them:
“So, do I understand you correctly to be saying that, in the period 1776-1788, some farmers in New Jersey exported grain to New York. Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, that’s wrong. They didn’t.”
“But . . . But they did!”
“Well, let me ask you this then: What would you say if I said they didn’t?”
I'm not sure that the optimism implicit in Adam Kolber's
How to Ask Questions at Conferences and Colloquia, posted earlier this year over at Prawfsblawg, will survive a reading of Schlag's one-paragraph catalog of standard workshop questions. Anyone who's still unwilling to give up on the faculty workshop ought to give Kolber a look.
