Call for Papers: William Blackstone: Intersections between Law and Culture, 44th American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting, Cleveland, OH, April 4-7, 2013. Submissions are due by Sept. 15, 2012.
One would be hard-pressed to overstate the importance and popularity among both legal and lay readers of William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69), both in the eighteenth century and beyond, and throughout Britain, its empire and America. Nonetheless, Blackstone’s other ventures, as a historian, as a literary writer, even as a legal writer, have been largely neglected. Building on the recent renaissance in Blackstone studiesmost notably, Wilfrid Prest’s biography, William Blackstone: Law and Letters in the Eighteenth Century (2008), his edited collection, Blackstone and his Commentaries: Biography, Law, History (2009), and his edition of Blackstone’s correspondence, The Letters of Sir William Blackstone, 1744-1780 (2006)this panel seeks presentations that address any aspect of Blackstone’s career, writings or life. Of particular interest are papers that address broader cultural and social issuesboth in their influence on Blackstone, and his influence on their growth and later interpretationdemonstrating the connections between Blackstone, as both a jurist and a thinker, and the larger world of eighteenth-century culture and society.
Abstracts of 250-400 words should be sent to Andrew Bricker (abricker [at] stanford [dot] edu) by 15 September 2012.
The 70-page call for papers for all the sessions in this conference is here. Another topic that might interest readers of this blog is “Were ‘The Rights of Man’ Human Rights? Reassessing the Enlightenment Legacy”
