[We have the following from Folger Institute, via H-Law.]
The Folger Institute is now accepting applications from scholars wishing to participate in a faculty weekend seminar on "The Legal and Cultural Worlds of the Inns of Court."
Christopher Brooks, Professor of History at Durham University, will direct this Faculty Weekend Seminar at the Folger Institute, Folger Shakespeare Library, in Washington, DC on 27 and 28 April 2012.
This two-day seminar in the Folger series on English pedagogical institutions focuses on the so-called "third
university of England," the inns of court and inns of chancery in London. Unincorporated voluntary societies that housed practicing lawyers alongside young men training for the profession, the inns also contained "amateur" members drawn largely from the landed gentry. Some have argued that the literary vitality and rich culture of performing arts associated with the inns was only loosely connected with the (meager) pedagogic framework they provided. Yet, the inns remained the intellectual nerve-center of English law. There are, therefore, intriguing questions about the place of the inns as distinctive legal and educational societies within the wider cultural life of London. A dialogic consideration of legal education, such as this seminar invites, challenges us to re-think the relationship between institutions and the acquisition and transmission of knowledge and expertise across a range
of media and intellectual communities. Applicants with fully developed research projects are welcome to frame their own inquiries in their applications. Others are invited to consider a contribution in connection with the themes discussed above and those found here.
Director: Christopher Brooks is Professor of History at Durham University and is currently the holder of a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, which he is using to write the volume covering the years 1625-1689 for the Oxford History of the Laws of England. His most recent major publication is Law, Politics and Society in Early Modern England (2008).
Schedule: All day Friday and Saturday, 27 and 28 April 2012.
Apply: 6 January 2012 for admission (and grants-in-aid to support travel and lodging for faculty from the Folger Institute consortium
Questions? Please contact institute@folger.edu.
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