NOTICE: Workshop on ‘Law and space: unity & the multiplication of law’s places’ (6 May 2011)

A Workshop on ‘Law and space: unity & the multiplication of law’s places’ is being held on 6 May 2011.

It's being hosted by the Brookes Critical Approaches to Law Research Group of Oxford Brookes University (Oxford, UK):

This workshop brings together a number of different trajectories, disciplines and perspectives to explore the recent turn to geography and spatial theory in Law. Sherene Razack, author of Race, Space and the Law, along with a number of other leading and emerging scholars in the field, will speak on their work on critical legal geography.

To register email Sarah Keenan s.keenan@brookes.ac.uk. Registration is free and there are a limited number of bursaries to cover travel for graduate students. If you are interested in applying for a travel bursary please contact Sarah Keenan.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Intersections of Law and Culture 2011 (23-25 September 2011)

A cross-disciplinary conference will be held from 23-25 September 2011 in Lugano, Switzerland. The conference is being hosted by the Department of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Franklin College, Switzerland:



Intersections of Law and Culture aims to investigate law’s place in culture and culture’s place in law. This focus proceeds from the twin premise that law, itself a cultural form, reacts to and is shaped by the cultural context in which it operates and that culture in turn is shaped by the regulative forces of law. Moreover, the operations of law—its processes and decisions—have entered the realm of popular culture, media and the arts as plot devices and narratives used in sit-coms, films and pulp fiction. These in turn have begun to change the way law operates. Together law and culture help to determine the ways in which we inhabit both our local contexts and the global stage.

The focus of this second Intersections of Law and Culture conference is on human rights. What are the philosophical, literary and cultural points of references for the management of human rights? How have current notions and framings developed historically? What are the mechanisms by which cultural narratives and popular representations of human rights find their way into legal processes? How does law in turn bleed into and influence cultural practices and conceptions of human rights? What is the relationship between international efforts and framings of human rights and their local implementations?

Clearly there are no simple, monolithic answers to these complex questions: a dialogue concerning the effects of the interplay between law and other forms of knowledge in the area of human rights can only proceed from a genuinely interdisciplinary point of departure. We welcome papers and panels from all cultural contexts and disciplinary perspectives, as well as from music and the arts. We envision the groupings of the papers not so much as distinct streams but as an interconnected matrix that acknowledges the overlap and mutual influence of modes of knowledge.

Submission of abstracts accepted until March 31, 2011. See the conference website for additional information.