Miscellaneous

Fellowship Opportunity: Digital Humanities Centers

Posted on August 07, 2009
From Fiona Barrett, Director, HASTAC Scholars Fellowships at Digital Humanities Centers: The NEH is sponsoring a number of Fellowships that will be take place at Digital Humanities Centers. Dante Noto, the Associate Director of the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI), has graciously offered to work with one applicant to apply for this NEH grant...

Call For Papers

Posted on August 07, 2009
Call for Papers/Abstracts/Submissions8th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts & Humanities January 13 - 16, 2010 Waikiki Beach Marriot Resort & Spa and Hilton Waikiki Prince Kuhio Hotel Honolulu Hawaii, USASubmission Deadline: August 21, 2009Sponsored by:University of Louisville - Center for Sustainable Urban NeighborhoodsWeb address: http://www...

Some New Law Related Drama Series Possible For Fall, Mid-Season

Posted on August 06, 2009
More legal and law-related drama promised from the USA Network. The series under development include Hotel Dix, about a hotel detective (hence the name); Facing Kate, about "a mediator from a family of corporate lawyers"; a pair of series about amateur sleuths, Gourmet Detective, featuring a culinary detective, and Busy Bodies, about a "soccer mom" and her friend, a "gay dad", who solve mysteries; Good Cop, Bad Cop, about siblings in law enforcement; and another legal drama, Louise Candell...

Brave New World To Be a Brave New Film?

Posted on August 06, 2009
From Steven Zeitchick's Risky Biz Blog, this news: Ridley Scott is making a film out of Aldous Huxley's iconic novel Brave New World. His partner: Leonardo di Caprio. The pair are working out of Universal Studios. More here.

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The Geography of Crime; Crime and Reality TV

Posted on August 06, 2009
Found while I was looking for something else:Lisa Kadonaga, Strange Countries and Secret Worlds in Ruth Rendell's Crime Novels, 88 Geographical Review 413-428 (July 1998). If you're interested in crime, gender, and reality TV, here's something of interest:Gray Cavender, Lisa Bond-Maupin, and Nancy C...

The Influence of Early Literary Theorists On Legal Writers

Posted on August 04, 2009
Stephen E. Smith, Santa Clara University, ha spublished "The Poetry of Persuasion: Early Literary Theory and Its Advice to Legal Writers," in volume 6 of the Journal of the Association of Legal Writing Directors (2009). Here is the abstract.This article will address the possibility and necessity of aesthetic pleasure as a part of persuasive endeavors...

The Logic of Legal Language

Posted on July 31, 2009
Eric Engle, Harvard University Law School, has published "Language, Logic, and Law: Death of Reason or Dearth of Reasons?" Here is the abstract.This article outlines a theory of language logic and law. First, it presents a theory of truth as a correspondence between a material fact and a description of that fact...

Call for Papers

Posted on July 31, 2009
The 9th International Roundtable for Semiotics of Law (IRSL 2010), 3-6 September 2010 - Pozna?Legal Rules, Moral Norms AND Democratic PrinciplesConveners:Adam Mickiewicz University Pozna?, University of ?ód?, Pozna?skie Towarzystwo Przyjació? NaukConference Venue:Department of Philosophy, Adam Mickiewicz University & PTPN, Pozna?Honorary Chairmen:Prof...

The Eternal Life of Vampires

Posted on July 31, 2009
Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan on why vampires live forever.

Call For Papers

Posted on July 29, 2009
******************************************************************************Call for Papers******************************************************************************Justice, Media and PublicChanging Public Perceptions in the New Media LandscapeResearch Institute for Law, Politics and JusticeKeele University, 25-26 March 2010******************************************************************************Confirmed keynote speakers:His Honour Judge Keith Cutler, Chairman of the Judges? Council Committee on CommunicationsOlga Kavran, Spokeswoman to the Prosecutor, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, The HagueJoshua Rozenberg, Freelance journalist, former BBC legal correspondent and former legal editor of the Daily TelegraphDaniel Stepniak, Associate Professor, University of Western Australia, author of Audio-visual Coverage of Courts: A Comparative Analysis (Cambridge University Press, 2008)...

Women's Memoirs

Posted on July 28, 2009
From History Today: Julie Peakman writes about "blaming and shaming in whore's memoirs." Men may have had power, but women often got the last laugh. Says Dr. Peakman, Just as the exploits of the likes of Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse and Charlotte Church fill today?s gossip magazines, notorious 18th-century women frequently found themselves in the limelight for their emotional outbursts, drunken revellings or pub brawls...

The Allure of Alcohol in the Newest Harry Potter Flick

Posted on July 28, 2009
The New York Times' Tara Parker-Pope discusses the flood of alcohol in the newest Harry Potter movie.Previous Harry Potter movies have shown drinking, but this one takes it to a new level. In one scene, Harry, Ron and Hermione order butterbeers at the pub, and Hermione ends up with a frothy mustache...

GLAAD: HBO Features More Gay, Bi, Transgender Characters On Its Shows Than Other Networks

Posted on July 27, 2009
The AP reports on a Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) study that found that HBO features more gay, bisexual, and transgender characters on its series than any other network. The survey looked at original primetime series on ten cable and the five major networks, more than 6000 hours of original programming...

And In the Role of Hamlet's Dad...

Posted on July 23, 2009
From the ABA site, this piece by Debra Cassens Weiss, noting that Associate Justice Stephen Breyer made his acting debut as the Ghost in Hamlet, during a conference on Shakespeare and the Law. (I assume that's Hamlet's father's ghost, BTW, not Banquo's ghost)...

The Top Twenty Five TV Legal Dramas

Posted on July 23, 2009
The ABA features the Top Twenty-Five Lawyer Shows, as chosen by a jury of 12 (of course!) here. Says its news release:Perry Mason always came out on top, but ?L.A. Law? bested Mason as the number-one pick among lawyers for the ?25 Greatest Legal TV Shows? in the August issue of ABA Journal...

The ABA's Ed Adams On NPR

Posted on July 23, 2009
NPR has a great interview with Ed Adams, editor and publisher of the ABA Journal, who discusses the 25 Top TV Legal Shows here.

Call For Stories

Posted on July 22, 2009
From Nancy Levit, Professor of Law, UMKCUMKC Law Review ?One-L Revisited? Law Stories ContestIntroduction by Scott TurowWith stories by:Ian AyresPamela BridgewaterAlafair BurkeStephen CarterAndrew McClurgMarc PoirierDeborah PostLisa PruittSaira RaoJeffrey RosenCameron StracherRobert R...

Law, Literature, and Presidential Advice

Posted on July 22, 2009
Harold H. Bruff's new book Bad Advice: Bush's Lawyers in the War on Terror (University of Kansas Press, 2009) begins with a chapter that should delight law and humanities devotees. It discusses some famous political advisors in literature and their interactions with their leaders: for example, Shakespeare's Archbishop of Canterbury and Henry V, and Robert Bolt's Sir (or Saint--it depends on whether or not you're Catholic, I suppose) Thomas More and Henry VIII...

Call For Participation: ASLCH Conference

Posted on July 22, 2009
From Keith Bybee, Syracuse University School of LawCall for Participation: 13th Annual ASLCH ConferenceMarch 19-20, 2010Brown University, Providence, Rhode IslandThe Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities is an organization of scholars engaged in interdisciplinary, humanistic legal scholarship...

Atlas Shrugged To Be Filmed?

Posted on July 21, 2009
From the Risky Biz Blog comes news that Ayn Rand's meganovel, Atlas Shrugged, might finally be headed for the big screen with Charlize Theron in the role of Dagny Taggart. Reporter Steven Zeitchik notes that an option with the Rand estate runs out next year so Lionsgate, MGM, and Viacom/Paramount seem to be trying to make this project happen.

Bewere!

Posted on July 20, 2009
NPR on the current flock (herd?) of werewolves.For more about werewolves, see Werewolves in Literature.

New Film About Women Judges and Attorneys in South Africa

Posted on July 20, 2009
Courting Justice, a new film from Women Make Movies, may interest readers of the Law and Humanities Blog. Here's the description.From tyranny to democracy. Fourteen years after the defeat of apartheid, South Africa?s fledgling democracy is acclaimed for its constitutional promise of comprehensive human rights and unprecedented judicial reform...

Silver Gavels Awards Coverage From DC

Posted on July 17, 2009
Coverage of the ABA's Silver Gavels Awards via Legal Bisnow. [Full disclosure: I'm a member of the ABA's Gavel Awards Screening Committee].

Canadian Legal Norms On Film

Posted on July 17, 2009
Ed Morgan, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, has published "The Mild, Mild West: Living by a Code in Canadian Law and Film," at 2 Law, Culture, and the Humanities 115-135 (2006).Canadians live by the rules. If the overriding myth of American history is that of rugged individualism and the conquest of the frontier, the story told of Canada is one of socialized, orderly engagement with and development of the north...

Perry Mason Babies

Posted on July 16, 2009
In yesterday's New York Times, Alessandra Stanley discusses Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's mention of the fictional Perry Mason as an influence on her. Newly sworn Senator Al Franken also noted that as a child, he liked watching Mason (as played by Raymond Burr) hunt down the real perpetrator of the crime of which his innocent client was accused...

The Death of Law

Posted on July 16, 2009
Lance McMillian, John Marshall Law School (Atlanta) has published "The Death of Law: A Cinematic Vision," forthcoming in the University of Arkansas (Little Rock) Law Review. Here is the abstract. Three recent films ? Children of Men, V for Vendetta, and Minority Report ? sound a warning call by painting stark and contrasting visions of life in the United States and Great Britain in the 21st century...

Equity In Law and Literature

Posted on July 16, 2009
Gary Watt, Reader and Associate Professor in Law, School of Law, University of Warwick, and an editor of the journal Law and Humanities, has published Equity Stirring:The Story of Justice Beyond Law (Hart Publishing). Here's an abstract.Sir Frederick Pollock wrote that 'English-speaking lawyers ...

Fans, Take Note!

Posted on July 07, 2009
Amazon is now taking orders for both season 1 and the complete set of DVDs of Ally McBeal.

A Review of James Boyd White's Living Speech

Posted on July 06, 2009
Zachary R. Calo, Valparaiso University School of Law, has published "Law, Language and Love: James Boyd White's Living Speech: Resisting the Empire of Force," in the Journal of Law, Philosophy, and Culture (forthcoming). Here is the abstract. A review essay considering James Boyd White's, Living Speech...

Themes of Justice and Ethics in Langston Hughes

Posted on July 03, 2009
Robert L. Tsai, American University College of Law, has published "Langston Hughes: The Ethics of Melancholy Citizenship." Here is the abstract. As a body of work, the poetry of Langston Hughes presents a vision of how members of a political community ought to comport themselves, particularly when politics yield few tangible solutions to their problems...

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