CFP: LCH 2027

[We have the following announcement.  DRE]

The Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities is excited to announce that we are now accepting submissions for our Twenty-Ninth Annual Conference. The conference will be held in person (with some online components) from May 27-28, 2027 at the University of California, Berkeley. This year's theme is "Discipline."  We are also accepting applications for our annual Graduate Student Workshop, which will take place at the University of California, Berkeley on May 26, 2027 (the day before the conference).  The application deadline for both events is January 31, 2027. 

[The full CFP is here.  It includes the following:]

Discipline.  As both noun and a verb, “discipline” is one of many provocative cognates across law 
and humanistic fields of study. The word simultaneously suggests punishment, intellectual tradition, ritual, practice, refinement, and improvement. Each of these meanings of “discipline,” while varying widely in their applications, maintains a shared command of subordination: subordination of knowledge traditions to their larger structures; subordination of the criminal to the state; subordination of the individual to a higher purpose.  

Is discipline, then, a problem, or a solution (or something else altogether)? Is discipline too mired in logics of authority and punishment to be redeemed? Is it a useful point of friction that can be leveraged, innovated, and adapted to expand both legal and humanistic frameworks? What does it mean to produce knowledge from within structures that use discipline as their organizing logic, and who or what is erased, illegible, or silent as a result? What logics and structures of discipline underwrite specific areas of law and legal history, whether in criminal or civil law? How is law in the process of defining or redefining punishment and carcerality? How do works of art and literature take up these questions or theorize discipline themselves?  

By treating discipline as a starting point for inquiry, this conference invites submissions that explore discipline from any angle. In addition to the concepts and questions outlined above, papers and panelists might consider how scholars in recent years have applied pressure to the concepts of discipline and disciplinarity. On one hand, scholars are tasked with developing projects that are “interdisciplinary,” a feature thought to produce innovation, but one that often poses challenges of institutional legibility and support. How does disciplinarity promote or inhibit the future of the humanities, particularly in relation to law and legal studies? What are the future possibilities for interdisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity, and antidisciplinarity? As a community of scholars and practitioners working across and between disciplines, LCH is uniquely poised to think about these problems and potentials of discipline.