[We have the following announcement. The deadline is July 31, 2017.]
This is a general call for papers in
anticipation of an intimate two-day seminar to be held at the University of
Cambridge on Friday 23rd March and Saturday 24th March, 2018. This will be an
advanced workshop, with drafts circulated in advance. The event will showcase a
number of rare and searching attempts to identify continuities and differences across
ancient, medieval, and modern legal and imperial contexts. This moves back
towards Braudel while also tailing in the direction of all that heat left by David
Armitage and Jo Guildi’s fiery interventions in The History Manifesto, which calls for newly ambitious historical
studies to break from long-set moulds. Empire lends itself naturally to
explorations of this kind using large time-frames. Not only is this due to the
endurance of many empires across centuries, but this also owes to the presence
(and comparability) of empires within different periods. Legal source materials
are helpful for facilitating this kind of approach, whether relating to private
law events or the public nature of imperium.
In the right hands, legal texts, court records, official opinions, drafted
constitutions and acts, along with the correspondences and commentaries
relating thereto can push us to contemplate a number of bold conclusions about
economics, politics, society, religiosity, and humanity in general.
Abstracts of proposals
(between 200 and 500 words) will be accepted until July 31st, 2017, at lawandempirecambridge@gmail.com. PhD students and postdoctoral scholars are encouraged
to include a CV with their proposal. Your proposal will
be especially welcome if you anticipate to be able to share work according to
the following guidelines:
1)
It will extend across at least
three centuries OR will otherwise offer an original reinterpretation of a more
focused period with the explicit goal to allow for new studies across
periodizations;
2)
It will cover any period from
Ancient Greece to the present day (900 BC — 2017 AD), with preference, however,
shown for the period between the latter Roman Empire and the interwar period
(500 AD – 1939 AD);
3)
It will explore a historical
topic relevant to law (broadly encompassing legal thought, legal process,
public law, private law, and constitutionalism) OR empire (pertaining either to
specific imperial regimes or to imperium as
synonym for public authority, sovereignty, authority), with preference shown to
approaches that consider BOTH;
4)
It will be laid out in a
thematic or chronological narrative style, or otherwise in case studies unified
appropriately in conclusion.
For enquiries and submissions, please
contact Dr Edward Cavanagh, at lawandempirecambridge@gmail.com.
