Deadline: November 1, 2012.

We invite historians of science, technology, and medicine; and scholars in science and technology studies, anthropology, the visual arts, cultural studies, and related fields to submit essays for an edited volume on the historical and cultural meanings of new materials.

The processes by which materials are developed and deployed provide a powerful lens on industrial cultures.  The means by which materials are regularized for production and use—their quality analyzed and controlled, their behaviors predicted—are particularly revelatory of epistemic and cultural commitments.  This collection seeks to compile papers on the processes (broadly defined) through which the materials of interest to commerce are distinguished, their nature and value established, and authoritative expertise in industrial settings asserted. Cases from any historical setting or period, and addressing any materials encountered or produced in industrial, scientific, technical, agricultural or medical contexts (whether in “expert” or “lay” hands) are welcome.

We believe that the formulation of scientific and technological knowledge; organizations of factory, farm, or laboratory labor; and prevailing conceptions of efficiency, luxury, physical ability, gender, race, health, humanness, sustainability, and environmental justice are all revealed in the histories of industrial materials.  Knowledge systems ranging from self-identified scientific and technical expertise to tacit aesthetic or moral criteria all shape the design and use of materials, and all that counts as useful or rigorous understanding of materials in a given setting—whether embodied in formal standards and instrumentation or in ascriptions of expertise–can be seen to reflect the social relations inherent in industrial production.

The testing of materials poses questions of particular interest for this collection.  These include questions of verisimilitude:  By what means are synthetic foods, textiles, building materials, skin or bone determined to be sufficiently like “naturally occurring” substances? Or: How is the test of an industrial product or process determined to replicate conditions of use?  They also include questions of definition: How does materials testing help delineate one substance from another, to define a discrete object of commercial investment and distribution? An object that can be named, and subject to proprietary handling? Finally, the history of materials testing may reveal where and how a given culture defines that which it believes to be natural or artificial, safe or unsafe, precisely or imprecisely measured, real or imagined; why such binaries emerge; and who attains the authority to draw such distinctions. All of these matters and others will be welcome subjects for proposals.

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Young researchers attending the conference are encouraged to present their own research in this field in form of a poster.  im

Over the past few years, a series of political scandals have raised the ‘new constitutional question’. Multinational corporations violated human rights; private intermediaries in the internet threatened freedom of opinion, and recently, with particular impact, the global capital markets unleashed catastrophic risks – all of these pose constitutional problems in the strict sense. It is outside the limits of the nation-state in transnational politics and, at the same time, outside institutionalized politics, in the ‘private’ sectors of global society that these constitutional problems arise.

In the conference, social scientists and lawyers will discuss the question whether Constitutionalism has the potential to counteract the expansionist tendencies of social systems outside the state, particularly the globalized economy, science and technology, and the information media, when they endanger individual or institutional autonomy.

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The recent (and ongoing) economic upheaval in the United States and elsewhere highlights the extent to which individual well-being is connected to actions and actors beyond individual control. American legal history is marked by contestation between our society’s assumption of individual capacity and sovereign autonomy and legal and policy commitments that recognize the limits of such capacity. Efforts to protect the public have often been derided as contrary to the values of individualism and anti-paternalism within American law and society. The ideological commitment to individual capacity has underwritten certain legal determinations that fail to take into account the fragility of individual (or national) well-being, whether in the due process context or in international law.

Even where vulnerability is recognized in American law, it is often recognized as an exceptional state of affairs—bestowed upon children or the aged. Moreover, the recognition of vulnerability is often denied certain classes of persons based on race or class, as in the case of the treatment of minority juvenile offenders, or particular victims of domestic violence. Can vulnerability be understood as the ordinary state of affairs? Can humanistic inquiries aid in the law’s capacity to take vulnerability (both individual and global) seriously in a society committed to the freedom and autonomy of the individual? This panel will take up these issues in wide-ranging areas, included, but not limited to, race, class, age, ethnicity, geography, affectional orientation, disability, foreign affairs, and national security. Methodological approaches include, but are not limited to, historical, philosophical, literary, theological, and critical.

This program will explore these issues with several invited panelists and panelists who are accepted through this call.

To be considered as a panelist, please submit a statement of interest by Friday, March 30, 2012, including a description (2-3 paragraphs are sufficient) of your presentation that will address themes highlighted in the above description, and the methodology through which you advance such themes. Please also submit an updated curriculum vitae.

Panelists will be selected by April 16, 2012. The Section hopes to have these papers published as part of an online mini-symposium sponsored by a law review, either in print or online.

All panelists will be responsible for paying their annual meeting registration fee and travel expenses. Full-time faculty members of AALS member and fee-paid law schools are eligible to submit papers. Foreign, visiting (and not full-time on a different faculty) and adjunct faculty members, graduate students, and fellows are not eligible to submit.

Any inquiries about the Call for Panelists should be submitted to Professor Charlton Copeland, University of Miami Law School, via electronic mail at ccopeland@law.miami.edu.

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aims to examine legal problems and issues across a diverse range of opinions.After providing a legal framework for a particular question, books int he series will call on experts in other fileds like science, business, history, engineering, political science, and even art to broaden and enhance the discussion. &LAW will provides unique, and at times, unexpected, answers to challenging topics of contemporary importance.

There series will include one or two publications a year, in print and e-book formats. Book proposals should be sent to:

Tracy A. Thomas
Professor of Law
The University of Akron School of Law
Akron, OH 44325-2901
(330) 972-6617
thomast@uakron.edu

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There will be six tracks for abstract submissions:

• Track 1 on “Scientific Research and Innovation Commons”
• Track 2 on “Digital Information Commons”
• Track 3 on “Historical experience of the knowledge commons”
• Track 4 on “Genetic Resource Commons”
• Track 5 on “Cultural Commons”
• Cross-cutting conference track 6 on climate change

The 1st Global Thematic IASC Conference on the Knowledge Commons aims to bring together leading people from a number of international scientific research communities, social science researchers, practitioners and policy analysts, to discuss the rationale and practical feasibility of institutional arrangements designed to emulate key public domain conditions for collaborative research.

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The Texas Hispanic Journal of Law and Policy is an academic publication that aspires to be a forum for issues relevant to Latino legal, political and social issues.The Journal invites ideas and points of views from within and from outside the legal community, as viewed by Latinos and non-Latinos.

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This Symposium affords an excellent opportunity to remember the events of Watergate and the aftermath of those events. Alongside a discussion of the legacy of Watergate institutional and legislative reform, the symposium also provides a platform to discuss the notions of justice, procedural consequences of prosecuting government officials, the freedom of press and legal ethics.

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