CALL FOR PAPERS: Law, Literature, and Translation Conference (Dublin, 9-10 June 2012)

I've heard about the following:

LAW, LITERATURE, AND TRANSLATION CONFERENCE
TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN 9-10th of June 2012

There is no law without literature for law is also literature. Irish druids were not only poets: they were also invested with judicial authority. Still to this day, literature and translation of literature often deal with law, but very often the focus lies on the many ways of breaking the law. Especially in Ireland, poets and jurists are both celebrated and blamed for their talents in using words. Both are endowed with the power to charm their audience, sometimes at the cost of truth. The training of both a jurist and a poet involves a certain degree of self-characterization formed and influenced by culture. Law and literature, like all the humanities, share a common interest in the human experience and they look into what makes them specifically human. However, law aims at the clarity of an objective science whereas the power of literature and its translation rely on emotion and sensitivity of interpretation. Unlike what is expected from law, they feed on ambivalence, ambiguity, paradox and contradiction. Both Law and Literature are caught in the extensive possibilities but also the limitations of both written and spoken words. This conference aims to create an interdisciplinary dialogue between scholars of law, literature, and translation studies, and it seeks to explore the various interactions between these disciplines. It takes a broad approach to the fields of law, literature, and literary translation, welcoming papers considering key areas such as the following (and beyond)

CALL FOR PAPERS: CAS@50 : Cutting Edges and Retrospectives

I just received the following information from the Commission on Legal Pluralism:

CAS@50 : Cutting Edges and Retrospectives

6-8 June 2012

University of Edinburgh

Over 2012, the Centre of African Studies (CAS) in Edinburgh will celebrate its 50th anniversary. The focal point for the year-long celebrations will be an international conference from 6-8 June on the theme of CAS@50: Cutting Edges and Retrospectives.

Emerging out of the Hayter enquiry into Area Studies in the United Kingdom, CAS was established with an explicitly interdisciplinary brief. Since 1962, our researchers have maintained one foot in a core discipline – such as Social Anthropology, History, Geography, Education, Economics, Development Studies, and Politics – and the other in African Studies more broadly. Over the past 50 years, CAS has generated leading research on themes as diverse as Pan-Africanism; Creole communities in colonial West Africa; hunter-gatherer societies in Southern and Central Africa; democratisation; migration and urbanisation; Africa and international education; labour and politics; gender and legal pluralism; and religion and society. More recently, reflecting a generational turnover, it has added biotechnology, borderlands, information technologies, land- and waterscapes, heritage and commemoration, and post-conflict transitions to the list of current research.

CAS@50 expects to use the anniversary not merely to look back upon the history of the Centre with a critical eye, but also to reflect on the trajectories of African Studies itself: to what extent is the terrain of academic enquiry from the early decades recognisable today, and might there be something to be said for looking afresh at some debates that have become obscured with the passage of time? Also, in what respects can one talk of genuine breakthroughs in our understandings, and where do unresolved issues reside? Other aspects of the conference look forward to emerging areas of research and address what might be considered cutting edge today, whether construed in terms of methodology or analytical perspective. Finally, the conference will tackle the contention that interdisciplinarity has been as much a problem for African Studies as its underlying source of strength.

NOTICE: Büchler on Islamic Law in Europe

Ashgate's Cultural Diversity and Law series, edited by Prakash Shah, has released Andrea Büchler (Zurich)'s Islamic Law in Europe?: Legal Pluralism and its Limits in European Family Laws:

Cultural and religious identity and family law are inter-related in a number of ways and raise various complex issues. European legal systems have taken various approaches to meeting these challenges. This book examines this complexity and indicates areas in which conflicts may arise by analysing examples from legislation and court decisions in Germany, Switzerland, France, England and Spain. It includes questions of private international law, comments on the various degrees of consideration accorded to cultural identity within substantive family law, and remarks on models of legal pluralism and the dangers that go along with them. It concludes with an evaluation of approaches which are process-based rather than institution-based.

CALL FOR PAPERS: International Conference on Law and Society (5-8 June 2012)

The Association for Political and Legal Anthropology has circulated information on an International Conference on Law and Society:

June 5-8, 2012

Hilton Hawaiian Village
Honolulu, Hawai‘i (USA)

We invite you to participate in the 2012 International Conference on Law and Society: Joint Annual Meetings of the Law and Society Association and the Research Committee on Sociology of Law (International Sociological Association), co-sponsored by the Canadian Law and Society Association (CLSA), the Japanese Association of Sociology of Law (JASL), and the Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA), UK.

The Call for Participation and Submission Site* will be available on October 4, 2011.

Deadline for submission of proposals is December 6, 2011.

Proposals for Individual Papers and Fully-Formed Sessions are welcome.

THEME: Sociolegal Conversations across a Sea of Islands

Building on a phrase coined by noted Polynesian scholar Epeli Hau‘ofa, our conference theme alludes both to the location of our meeting in Hawai‘i with its complex cultural and legal terrain and contemporary struggles over sovereignty and indigenous rights; and to the uniqueness of this opportunity for scholars from the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, North America, and other world regions to engage in conversation. So we seek papers, panels, and roundtables aimed at stimulating conversations that will build bridges across the seas of law and society and at the same time redirect their currents; about issues and ideas that are at once locally grounded and globally relevant; that seek to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar; that cross national, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries.

Our theme is broad, encompassing socio-legal concerns both familiar (such as courts and litigation, legal education, health, legal pluralism) and novel (such as indigenous peoples, finance and economy, war and human security, immigration, counter-terrorism, transnational regulation, globalization, and recolonization). Please see below for a non-exhaustive list of possible topics. They are examples only. Other law and society topics are welcome.