The Program Committee of the American Society for Legal History invites proposals for complete panels and individual papers for the 2023 meeting to be held October 26-28 in Philadelphia. Panels and papers on any facet or period of legal history from anywhere in the world are welcome. We encourage thematic proposals that transcend traditional periodization and geography.
Limited financial assistance (covering airfare and ground transportation only) is available for presenters in need, with priority given to graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and scholars from abroad.
Panel proposals should include the following: a c.v. with complete contact information for each person on the panel, including chairs and commentators; 300-word abstracts of individual papers; and a 300-word description of the panel.
The Program Committee also welcomes other forms of structured presentation for a 90-minute slot, including lightning round (1-2 chairs, 8-12 presenters for a few minutes each on projects in a related field at any stage of development), skills/pedagogical workshop (chair, 3-4 presenters), or roundtable format (1-2 chairs, 3-4 presenters). The Committee will also consider author-meets-reader panel proposals concerning books with a copyright date of 2022. We encourage panels that put two or three books in conversation, with up to three commentators total. Sufficient information following the general guidelines for panel proposals should be provided for the Committee to assess the merits of the presentation.
The Program Committee additionally seeks proposals for full-day or half-day pre-conference symposia crafted around related themes to augment traditional conference offerings. Please provide a 1-2 page proposal including program title, the intended length of program, and a program description, as well as a c.v. and contact information for each presenter. The Program Committee is available to consult with organizers of such symposia as they develop their proposal. Pre-conference symposia must be self-funded. Organizers are encouraged but not required to host their symposia at the conference hotel. Please note that the deadline for these submissions is earlier than the deadline for main conference submissions so that organizers whose symposia are not selected have an opportunity to submit their panels to the main conference.
We especially encourage proposals for pre-conference events that will involve scholars in emerging fields or in fields previously underrepresented at ASLH conferences and/or that will promote early career scholarly development.
As a general matter, we will not be able to accommodate special scheduling requests, so prospective presenters, chairs, and commentators at the main conference should plan to be available on Friday, October 27, and Saturday, October 28. The ASLH has a strict one-appearance policy (excluding appearances at pre-conference symposia). Prospective participants may submit proposals for multiple sessions, with the understanding that the panel chair will be responsible for promptly finding an appropriate substitute member for any session from which a participant has to withdraw.
The Program Committee encourages panels that include participants from groups historically under-represented in the organization, and that include participants who represent a diversity of rank, experience, and institutional affiliation.
The members of the Program Committee are Rabiat Akande, Evelyn Atkinson, Jon Connolly, Jenny Huangfu Day, Aaron Hall, Doug Kiel, K-Sue Park, Ivon Padilla-Rodriguez, Kalyani Ramnath, and Govind Sreenivasan. The co-chairs of the Program Committee are Catherine Evans (catherine.evans@utoronto.ca) and Kyle G. Volk (kyle.volk@umontana.edu).
All program presenters must be current members of the Society by the date of the Annual Meeting. All proposals must be submitted through the ASLH website, which will be available to take submissions starting January 17, 2023. Please visit here for updates and additional information. Scholars looking to build a panel may post their potential paper topics here. Information on how to build a successful panel can be found here.
The deadline for Pre-Conference submissions is Friday, February 17, 2023. The deadline for all other submissions is Friday, March 17, 2023.
