CALL FOR PAPERS: Law Text Culture

Volume 18 of Law Text Culture explores how the rule of law is represented in a variety of discourses both within and outside the legal domain – including film, television, opera, court cases, and popular magazines – in East Asia. It re-orients the study of ‘Law and Humanities’ by shifting the focus from the Western World to East Asia, and presents a new approach to the study of East Asian legal culture by approaching the region through a post-colonial lens.

We are particularly interested in contributions on Singapore, Malaysia and Korea, though articles on other countries or jurisdictions in the region are welcome. The volume will include both critical essays and less conventional forms of legal reflection such as memoirs, photo- essays, poetry and artistic pieces.

The relationship between the rule of law and (post-)colonialism has been the subject of lively scholarly debate. This volume investigates how the rule of law has been articulated, refracted, conceptualized, or resisted by different discourses in colonial and post-colonial societies in East Asia. It also builds on recent, site-specific works on post-colonial studies that give cultural and geographical precision to the arguably more universalist tone of the first generation post-colonial theorists. The volume’s focus on (post-)colonialism will keep clearly in view continuities and underlying parallels between the East Asian region and places with a legacy of colonialism, such as India, Australia, and Canada. The term ‘cultural imaginary’ is broadly defined, and includes articulations or representations of the rule of law in a range of cultural products in human society, including, but not limited to, the law itself.

If you are interested in contributing to this special issue of Law Text Culture please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words to the guest editors by email by 28 February 2014. Authors will be informed of decisions on abstracts by the end of March. Selected authors will be invited to submit full papers by 31 May 2014, and will be informed of the outcome of the peer review process by August 2013. Volume 18 of Law Text Culture is scheduled for publication in December 2014.