"Paranoia and Pain Embodied in Psychology, Literature and Bioscience," Inaugural Literature and Science Conference, School of English, University of Liverpool, April 2-4, 2012.

The conference aims to explore overlapping paradigms of paranoia and pain in psychology, biological sciences, and literary texts/contexts. How is paranoia related to pain? How is pain expressed with/without paranoia? How are these two terms exposed in various contexts? How does our understanding of the psychophysiology of pain interrelate with literary accounts of paranoia and pain? What does research in the field of paranoia offer to literary studies surrounding this concept and vice versa? To what extent does pain echo paranoia; and is this echo physiological, stylistic, psychological, symbolic, or literal? How do these terms regulate our behaviour and expression of emotions in relation to broader concepts such as faith, ethics, and the value of human life? What does the study of these concepts offer today’s generation of intellectuals with regard to human relationships and the way we communicate with each other? This international conference brings together experts from different fields to address these questions by incorporating individual presentations and panels that focus on cross-disciplinary studies.

Considering the diversity of themes and questions for this conference, individual papers as well as pre-formed panels are invited to examine the following three key areas, proposed by the conference organizers. Other inter- and multi-disciplinary topics, relevant to the conference, will also be considered:

1- Impressions:

Expression of paranoia and pain in literary/scientific contexts; Metaphorical and literal exposition of pain and paranoia; Paranoid texts, painful contexts; The image of paranoia and pain in poetry, prose, and visual arts; Textual culture and the symbolics of pain; Stylistics of pain and paranoia in communication; How does the narrative of pain/paranoia identify with studies of affect?
2- Intersections:

The biology of pain and the emotional interpretation; The biology/literature of anaesthesia; Physical symptoms, emotional translations; Aesthetics and affective perspectives on pain/paranoia; How have cultural attitudes to the experience of pain and/or paranoia changed over the course of history?

3- Dissections:

Faith and the formation of our ideas on pain/paranoia; Side effects of pain-relief medication; Ethics and the questions of double effect; Is it ever appropriate to withhold pain relief in order to extend the life of a sufferer where analgesics have the side effect of shortening life?

http://paranoiapain.liv.ac.uk/

"The Power of the Word: Poetry, Theology and Life," Heythrop College and Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, June 17-18, 2011.

Religion has always been part of Western literary traditions. Many canonical literary texts engage extensively with theology and religious faith and practice, and theological and spiritual writers make liberal use of literary genres, tropes and strategies. Recent work in philosophy of religion, theology, the study of religions and literary criticism has once again brought to the fore issues which arise when literature, faith, theology and life meet, whether in harmony or in conflict.

This international conference aims to:

• foster a dialogue among scholars in theology, philosophy, spirituality and literature and between these and creative writers;
• discuss the ‘truth’ of poetry and the ‘truth’ of theology in relation to each other;
• reassess the idea of poetry as a criticism of life;
• discuss the relationship between faith, theology and the creative imagination through an examination of theoretical issues and the study of specific texts;
• examine the importance of poetry for personal and social identity, social cohesion and relations between faiths and cultures.

Keynote Speakers:

Gianni Vattimo (Turin): "Poetry as Prayer"
Jay Parini (Vermont): "Poetry as Scripture: the Idea of Inspiration"
Michael Paul Gallagher (Rome): "Identifying a Religious Imagination"
Paul Fiddes (Oxford): "Law and Divine Mercy in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and The Merchant of Venice"
Helen Wilcox (Bangor): "'When the Soul unto the lines accords': Faith and Imagination in the Poetry of Donne and Herbert"

Panels:

Does Poetry Matter?                                          

Imagination, Theology and Faith

Poetry and Theology                                        
Poetry, the Mystical and the Devotional
Poetry and Sacred Texts                                   
Poetry, Ethics and Society
Poetry, Philosophy and Theology

Visit: http://www.heythrop.ac.uk/about-us/conferences-and-seminars/the-power-of-the-word-poetry-theology-and-life.html.

Cfp: "Philosophies of Travel: Exploring the Value of Travel in Art, Literature, and Society," University of Sydney, September 30-October 1, 2011.

Journey, pilgrimage, linear narration; what are the paradigms of travel and how do we think on them? The philosophies of travel make vital revelations about the cultures from which travellers emerge. Do we travel, to change ourselves or as Samuel Johnson argued, to “regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are”? Or do we use the journey to ‘turn back’ on things reflectively, or, as Pliny wrote, “to see what we disregard when it is under our own eyes.” From the ‘temple tourists’ of Augustan Rome, to Thomas Cook’s dreams of a tourism-enabled sobriety, to iPod™-wielding backpackers in the ashrams of India, travel has been understood as education, forging, exploration (both of the worlds of others and of the self), as well as frivolity, hedonism, and colonialism. Tourists have even been called the “barbarians of our Age of Leisure” (Turner and Ash 1975). This conference will look at the habits, traditions, and writings of travellers from the past and the present in order to build a picture of what travel is and has been understood to be for the traveller.

Abstracts for papers of 20min length are welcome on any of the following subjects:

• Philosophical justifications of/explanations of the impulse to travel
• Pilgrimage, religious tourism, and spiritual tourism
• Identity, meaning, and tourism 
• The aesthetics of travel in art, literature, or film
• Ideals of travel/ideals of journeying
• Reactions against travellers/travel

Abstracts of no more than 250 words, as well as a short paragraph with biographical information, should be submitted by 30 June 2011 to Alex Norman (Alex.Norman@sydney.edu.au).

Cfp: "Uncanny Homecomings: Narrative Structures, Existential Questions, Theological Visions," University of Iowa, August 26-28, 2011.

The 2011 Religion, Literature and the Arts conference encourages participants to investigate the subject of home and homecoming. Poets and philosophers have long identified the human yearning to find a geographic and emotional environment that allows for a feeling of integration, where we understand our place in the greater whole. If we linger with this notion, however, the paradoxical nature of our desire for homecoming emerges: the home that we remember from our past is not the place that we are ever able to find in our present, and the places that we find or create in our present that have an aura of "home" are frequently disconcerting in their ability to provide comfort. There is something unheimlich in returning home, a lesson learned by individuals from Odysseus or the Prodigal Son in the Western tradition to those facing crises of homecoming in 21st century Palestine or Algeria.

Several different and helpful frames emerge as ways of investigating our longing for home. Narrative structures reveal the stories that shape and alter our trajectories, helping us to find a home in and through language, to root ourselves in a plot of land. Existential questions disclose the historical, philosophical, political, psychological and temporal desire for locating ourselves in a home. Theological visions incorporate the depth dimension of the human desire for integration within the rich tapestry of religious narratives that frame our cycles of exile and return.

Papers can speak about a particular historical figure or group, event, practice, text or work of art, reflecting on its capacity to disclose the provocative problem of homecoming in relation to human well-being. They can reflect on the nature, origin and effects of this desire in human history, using resources from any of the disciplines represented at the conference, and discussing how particular religious or secular communities have understood, interpreted, or reused myths, symbols or ideas about homecoming. Session papers should be 20 minutes long, with 10 minutes reserved for questions and answers. Please submit your abstract into the most appropriate of the following categories: Religious Studies, Literature, Art and Art History, Popular Culture, Postcolonial Approaches.

More information is available on the website at: http://rla2011.blogspot.com/.

"East / West: Deterritorialization, Negotiation, Glocalization," 35th IAPL Conference, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, May 23-29, 2011.

35th Annual Conference, International Association for Philosophy and Literature.

Further details will be provided at: http://www.iapl.info/conferencedetails11.php.

Pub: Bruce Clark, et al., eds. ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

Clarke, Bruce, and Manuela Rossini, eds.  Routledge Companion to Literature and Science.  London: Routledge, 2010.

With forty-four newly commissioned articles from an international cast of leading scholars, the Routledge Companion to Literature and Science traces the network of connections among literature, science, technology, mathematics, and medicine. Divided into three main sections, this volume links diverse literatures to scientific disciplines from Artificial Intelligence to Thermodynamics surveys current theoretical and disciplinary approaches from Animal Studies to Semiotics traces the history and culture of literature and science from Greece and Rome to Postmodernism. Ranging from classical origins and modern revolutions to current developments in cultural science studies and the posthumanities, this indispensible volume offers a comprehensive resource for undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers. With authoritative, accessible, and succinct treatments of the sciences in their literary dimensions and cultural frameworks, here is the essential guide to this vibrant area of study.

More information is here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415495253/ref=pe_5050_17186000_snp_dp#_.

"The Legal Case: Interdisciplinary Perspectives," Law and Literary Studies Colloquium, Hong Kong University, June 23-25, 2010.

The doctrine of stare decisis, whereby courts are bound by precedent cases, underpins legal reasoning in the common law world. At the same time, the legal judgment is itself a product of institutional and linguistic practices, and raises broader questions about the foundations and boundaries of law. This colloquium re-examines the seemingly familiar notion of a 'legal case' by exploring the histories, practices, conventions and rhetoric of 'case law'. It will also investigate the interaction between cases and other discourses such as fiction, drama and film. Speakers will include legal philosophers, legal historians, literary critics, and linguists who work at the intersection of law and the humanities.

Visit the conference website here: http://www.hku.hk/english/LLSC.

Schulman, Sam. "Good Writers. Bad Men. Does It Matter?" IN CHARACTER: A JOURNAL OF EVERYDAY VIRTUES March 30, 2010.

A great majority of us have done discreditable, even cruel things in our lives, even after we have ceased to be children. And the great majority of that majority find it in our hearts to forgive ourselves, and to think more about how we have been injured than the injuries we have made. But it seems to matter more when a writer or artist behaves badly. Why should it? If my dentist loves one of his daughters more than any of his other children, or a Boeing engineer is having an affair with her best friend's husband, it is cruel. But their cruelties don't impair the quality of my bridgework or disturb my tendency to sleep peacefully through take-offs and landings. Why does the bad character of a writer or artist matters so much more? And how does "mattering" work? Big biographies of major authors tend to raise or lower their subjects in the esteem of their publics: Flannery O'Connor, up; John Cheever, not so much. But when there is a big revelation - especially a revelation of weakness or worse - there is a stimulus effect. The reputation of Philip Larkin has never recovered from his friend Andrew Motion's biography, which pointed out repeatedly that he, Motion, though a pretty dreadful poet, is a far better human being than Larkin was. Readers knew about John Cheever's alcoholism and his bisexual priapism from his journals, first published in the same magazine which published his beautiful short stories and from the complaining memoirs of his daughter before Brad Bailey's Cheever biography of last year. The big shock of the year, however, was the "authorized biography" of V.S. Naipaul, by Patrick French: The World Is What it is. French's book shocked only partly because of the story it told, the real surprise was that Naipaul collaborated so completely with its telling. . . . Read the rest here: http://incharacter.org/review/good-writers-bad-men-does-it-matter/.

Cfp: "Philosophy in Literature," University of Vaasa, Finland, May 27-28, 2010.

Plato, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche are classical examples of the philosophers who discuss philosophical ideas with literary style. Writers of world literature such as Dostoyevsky, Hesse, and Beauvoir, for their part, are known as novelists whose books discuss philosophical questions or are otherwise considered to be philosophical or profound. These and many other examples from different countries and continents show that literature can enrich and stimulate the discussion on philosophical themes. Again, philosophical concepts and thematizations may offer tools for literary research of literature. The goal of this conference is to bring together philosophers and scholars of the study of literature to discuss the aptness of literature in the discussion of philosophical questions and the suitability of philosophical concepts and theories in literary research. The papers to be proposed can be case studies in which examples of literature are discussed. The papers can also be theoretical studies that aim to contribute to the theory of the study of literature or philosophy.

Some suggested questions and subtopics are the following:

• Examples of the philosophical themes or questions discussed in world literature by different authors from different periods
• Examples of the approaches to philosophical themes or questions in literature
• Which philosophical themes, fields (e.g., metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics) or questions are or have been especially apt to be discussed in the forum of world literature? Why?
• Which philosophical themes or questions are difficult to be discussed by means of fiction? Why?
• Which literary genres or types of novels are especially suitable to be forums of philosophical discussion?
• In what ways does philosophical imagination differ from fiction? In what sense is imagination similar in philosophy and in fiction?
• What special tools are available in literature to deal with philosophical questions - tools that are lacking from standard academic philosophical prose?
• In what ways can philosophical tools (concepts, views, theories) be used for the analysis of literature of different countries and cultures? In what ways should philosophical tools not be used in literary research?
• What philosophically interesting differences and similarities can be found in the literature of different cultures and continents? Are the differences related to philosophical themes and questions, or rather to approaches or the ways of discussing?
• What gender differences are there in male and female novelists' approaches to philosophical questions? How do philosophically oriented novelists discuss gender?
• How have feminist philosophers treated issues relating to gender, sexuality and embodiment in literary works? What kinds of philosophical concepts or theoretical approaches can be productive from the feminist perspective when studying the above mentioned questions in literature?

Conference Directors: Chandana Chakrabarti, Davis and Elkins College, and Tomi Lethonen, University of Vassa, Finland

Please send 150 words abstract by email to Panos Eliopoulos ksatriya@tri.forthnet.gr by February 15, 2010.

Chace, William M. "The Decline of the English Department." THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR (Autumn 2009).

During the last four decades, a well-publicized shift in what undergraduate students prefer to study has taken place in American higher education. The number of young men and women majoring in English has dropped dramatically; the same is true of philosophy, foreign languages, art history, and kindred fields, including history. As someone who has taught in four university English departments over the last 40 years, I am dismayed by this shift, as are my colleagues here and there across the land. And because it is probably irreversible, it is important to attempt to sort out the reasons—the many reasons—for what has happened. . . . What are the causes for this decline? There are several, but at the root is the failure of departments of English across the country to champion, with passion, the books they teach and to make a strong case to undergraduates that the knowledge of those books and the tradition in which they exist is a human good in and of itself. What departments have done instead is dismember the curriculum, drift away from the notion that historical chronology is important, and substitute for the books themselves a scattered array of secondary considerations (identity studies, abstruse theory, sexuality, film and popular culture). In so doing, they have distanced themselves from the young people interested in good books. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-decline-of-the-english-department/.

Jacquette, Dale. Review of Garry L. Hagberg, DESCRIBING OURSELVES. NDPR (September 2009).

Hagberg, Garry L. Describing Ourselves: Wittgenstein and Autobiographical Consciousness. Oxford: OUP, 2008. We describe ourselves when we articulate the condition of our bodies and minds. Since other persons from an external standpoint can often do at least as good a job of characterizing the public facts about us as we can ourselves, it seems to fall to a certain kind of introspective philosophical autobiography to delve into the inner world of first-person psychological experience in the self's encounters with itself. Or so we might naturally think from the standpoint of naïve but commonly accepted assumptions about the literature of autobiography as self-descriptive linguistic expression. Such a view of things is typically wedded to a number of substantive philosophical commitments amounting to a metaphysics of the self, of how meaning relates thought to language and the world, and potentially involving a fundamental division of mind and body, of internal and external phenomena. These commitments, powerful as they may seem, are not easily sustained when subjected to the kinds of criticisms Wittgenstein raises in his later posthumous writings, particularly in the Philosophical Investigations and Lectures on Philosophical Psychology. Wittgenstein is frequently seen as challenging the internalist proposition that the self is in a privileged epistemic position to understand its sensations, beliefs, attitudes, judgments, emotions, responses to others and whatever else occurs within a psychological subject's supposedly impenetrable subjectivity that makes the self uniquely qualified to understand and report on its own immediately lived-through experiences. Garry L. Hagberg, in this interesting new philosophical study of the literature of autobiography, explores these topics in relation to the mind's efforts to understand itself reflexively and to share the information with others. The book develops three major themes: (1) the nature of autobiographical thinking, self-investigation, memory, recollection, and writing about one's self from the standpoint of an attitude that Hagberg calls autobiographical consciousness; (2) the concept of the self implied or presupposed by autobiographical practices as contrasted with Hagberg's references to the dualistic 'Cartesian legacy'; (3) Wittgenstein's philosophical remarks especially in the later period as they relate both positively and negatively to the concept of self and the philosophical understanding of autobiography as self-discovery, self-exploration, and, as Hagberg's title indicates, self-description. In the course of considering these topics, Hagberg discusses, in fine, such autobiographical classics as Augustine's Confessions and Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground, as well as literary and artistic self-portraits by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt van Rijn, Vladimir Nabakov, along with related reflections on the self and the art of autobiography by Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard, Iris Murdoch, Stanley Cavell, Donald Davidson, and, of course, with special focus throughout, Wittgenstein. . . . Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=17525.

Cfp: Second Biennial Literature and Law Conference, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, April 16, 2010.

This conference aims to bring scholars of literature and law into an interdisciplinary setting to share the fruits of their research and scholarship.The conference’s keynote speaker is John Matteson, winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Biography for his book Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father. John Matteson is a professor in the English Department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and obtained his JD from Harvard University.

The journal Law and Literature is in the process of publishing a special symposium issue containing full versions of select papers presented at the inaugural Literature and Law Conference, and we are in negotiations with the journal to do the same for this second biennial conference.

We invite papers dealing with all aspect of literature and law, including papers which might address literature dealing with some of the following:

-Comparative Justice

-The rule of law

-Rhetoric and law

-Judicial discretion and its abuse

-Blind justice

-Common versus Civil law

-(Post)Colonial Justice

-Law and Deception

-(Mis)Interpretation and Competing Interpretations of Law

-Non Western Justice and Injustice

-Comic Justice and Injustice

Please submit abstracts (250 words or less) to Andrew Majeske, by Friday, January 15, 2010.

Bradatan, Costica, ed. PHILOSOPHY AS LITERATURE. THE EUROPEAN LEGACY 14.5 (2009).

Articles:

• "Introduction: Unorthodox Remarks on Philosophy as Literature" by Costica Bradatan 513–518
• "Of Poets and Thinkers: A Conversation on Philosophy, Literature and the Rebuilding of the World" by Costica Bradatan; Simon Critchley; Giuseppe Mazzotta; Alexander Nehamas 519–534
• "Hunting Plato's Agalmata" by Matthew Sharpe 535–547
• "The Nexus of Unity of an Emerson Sentence" by Kelly Dean Jolley 549 – 560
• "The Concept of Writing, with Continual Reference to ‘Kierkegaard’" by Mark Cortes Favis 561–572
• "An Inhumanly Wise Shame" by Brendan Moran 573–585
• "Stanley Cavell and Two Pictures of the Voice" by Adam Gonya 587–598
• "Philosophy, Poetry, Parataxis" by Jonathan Monroe 599–611

Review Essays:

• "After the Abyss: Theory Lives On" by Constance Eichenlaub 613–616
• "Funny Masters" by Sonia Arribas 617–620
• "Ritual or Playful? On the Foundations of European Drama" by Victor Castellani 621–631

Book Reviews:

• Reviews by Nick Bentley; Ronald Bogue; Peter Burke; John Danvers; Christopher Irwin; Geoff Kemp; Martyn Lyons; David Malcolm; Gordon Marino; Amy L. Mclaughlin; Brian Nelson; Christian Roy; Paola S. Timiras; Eric White 633–646

Miscellany:

• Books Received 647–650

The issue is accessible here (subscription required): http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g914049653.

Bauerlein, Mark. "Diminishing Returns in Humanities Research." CHRONICLE REVIEW July 20, 2009.

In a working paper I wrote recently for the American Enterprise Institute, "Professors on the Production Line, Students on Their Own," I reported that over the past five decades, the "productivity" of scholars in the fields of languages and literature had increased hugely: from approximately 13,000 publications to 72,000 a year. Consider the output in literary studies. From 1950 to 1985, 2,195 items of criticism and scholarship devoted to William Wordsworth appeared. Virginia Woolf garnered 1,307, Walt Whitman 1,986, Faulkner 3,487, Milton 4,274, and Shakespeare at the top, with 16,771. Type any major author into the MLA International Bibliography database and more daunting tallies pop up. In each pile lies everything from plot summaries to existentialist reflections. But for all practical purposes, such as teaching an undergraduate class, they impart the meanings and representations to the full. The accomplishment of the enterprise, however, was a curse for young aspirants, the graduate student in search of a dissertation (like I was in 1985) and the assistant professor in need of a book. They had to write something new and different. Theories and valuations that displaced the meaning of the work and prized the unique angle of the interpreter didn't just flatter the field. They empowered novices to carry on. The long shadow of precursors dissipated in the light of creative, personal critique. The authors studied might remain, but there were new theories to rehearse upon them and topics to expound through them, controversies in which to "situate" oneself, and readerly dexterities to display. It was liberating and enabling, as subsequent outputs show. From 1986 to 2008, Wordsworth collected 2,257 books, chapters, dissertations, etc. Faulkner came in at 2,781, Milton at 3,294, Whitman at 1,509, Woolf at 3,217, and Shakespeare at 18,799. The model worked—astoundingly so. Degrees, grants, jobs, tenure, and raises rested on those publications, and if older criticism answered questions about the meaning of Paradise Lost, well, other questions had to be found. Something happened, though, in the process. As striving junior scholars and established seniors staged one reading after another, as advanced theories were applied and hot topics attached, the performances stacked up year by year —and seemed to matter less and less. Look at the sales figures for monographs. Back in 1995, the director of the Pennsylvania State University Press, Sanford G. Thatcher, asked who reads those books and revealed in The Chronicle, "Our sales figures for works of literary criticism suggest that the answer is, fewer people than ever before." Sixty-five percent of Penn State's recent offerings at that point sold fewer than 500 copies. A few years later, also in The Chronicle, Lindsay Waters, an executive editor at Harvard University Press, said his humanities monographs "usually sell between 275 and 600 copies." In 2002 the Modern Language Association issued a report on scholarly publishing that cited editors estimating purchases of as low as 200 to 300 units. Remember, too, that standing library orders account for around 250 copies. (That's my guess—also, a few librarians have told me that the odds that such books will never be checked out are pretty good.) Why the disjuncture? Because performance ran its course, and now it's over. The audience got bored. For decades the performative model obscured a situation that should have been recognized at the time: Vast areas of the humanities had reached a saturation point. Hundreds of literary works have undergone introduction, summation, and analysis many times over. Hamlet alone received 1,824 items of attention from 1950 to 1985, and then 2,406 from 1986 to 2008. What else was to be said? Defenders of the endeavor may claim that innovations in literary studies like ecocriticism and trauma theory have compelled reinterpretations of works, but while the advent of, say, queer theory opened the works to new insights, such developments don't come close to justifying the degree of productivity that followed. Also, the rapid succession of theories, the Next Big Thing, and the Next … evoked the weary impression that it was all a professional game, a means of finding something more to say. . . . Read the rest here: http://chronicle.com/article/Diminishing-Returns-in/47107/.

Pub: OXFORD LITERARY REVIEW 31.1 (2009).

Contents: Editorial by Sarah Wood Articles : 1 "The Time for Poetry" by Peter Dayan 15 "In the Living-Room: Jacques Derrida's Memory" by Mark Robson 33 "Anticipated Returns: Purgatory, Exchange and Narrative after Life" by Alice Bennett 49 "Graphic Ambivalent" by Forbes Morlock 65 "Foreveries" by Sarah Wood 79 "Singbarer Rest: Friendship, Impossible Mourning (Celan, Blanchot, Derrida)" by Ginette Michaud Visit the journal homepage here: http://www.eupjournals.com/journal/olr (subscription required).

Heald, Paul. "The Death of Law and Literature." UGA Legal Studies Research Paper 09-006.

Abstract: thirty years after the publication of James B. White's iconic The Legal Imagination, Law & Literature scholarship has gained no traction in the practice of law. This essay, prompted by a session of teaching Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden to federal judges, explains why our scholarship has no impact, but fiction itself is very influential. Download the paper here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1407698.

Stern, Simon. "Literary Evidence and Legal Aesthetics." TEACHING LITERATURE AND LAW. Ed. Austin Sarat, et al. New York: MLA, forthcoming.

Abstract: this short essay considers the different ways in which law professors and English professors teach courses in Law and Literature -- particularly the differences in the course materials and the analytic approaches used in understanding those materials. Courses taught on law faculties generally include fewer readings drawn from case law and legal theory. On the other hand, courses taught in English departments are more likely to emphasize similarities between the legal readings and works of fiction or drama. I discuss some of the disciplinary habits that make it difficult for faculty members in each area to come to terms with materials taken from another discipline, but I end by arguing that these barriers are not insurmountable and can even be addressed, to some extent, by focusing on analytical habits already available in the home discipline. Download the paper here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1378337.

Cfp: "Style in Theory / Styling Theory," University of Malta, November 26-28, 2009.

Inaugural International Literary Criticism and Theory Conference. “… one has to be in possession of literature.”—Jean-Luc Nancy “…truth demands a laborious science without style.”—Jean-Luc Nancy The two epigraphs to the conference—neither of which lacks disingenuousness—mark the tensions that have long existed between philosophy and literature over the question of style. Is Theory reallythe discourse to think through, perhaps even to impossibly resolve, those tensions? As a discourse arguably more hospitable than most to the“writer philosopher,” with investments both in “the impassive jouissance of science” (Nancy) and in “the surprise of writing itself” (Leavey), theory countenances the idea of “truth with style.” It is possibly the discourse that has come closest to the dream of a writing that would be neither philosophy nor literature, but that would retain the memory of both (Derrida). That, at least, is one of the stories theory tells itself. It is a complex story, because the place of style in theory is the question and history of the relations between philosophy, literature, and theory. In reopening that question and that history, this conference attempts re-articulations that appear particularly urgent now, when more than ever there is a keen awareness of writing’s different mediations and of the singularities that it plurally carries. And so, once again—style, in theory: What, in theory, is style? What is the role and place of style(s) in theory, in the writing practice of theory? Is theory style, and is this the same thing as saying it is stylized? Has theory gone out of style, never (or about) to return? Can theory be restyled? Style, in theory—is that the question of theory, and of theory’s future in the age of new media? The conference organizers invite abstracts for papers that explore these and related issues. The following additional points may serve as further invitations to thinking through the place of style in theory: • Is there a particular style—or styles, or patterns of stylization—proper to theory? Might this question be reframed in terms of the relation between le mode and la mode of theory? • Who are the theorists of style? What claims do they make for theory’s style? Is there, in effect, a canon of texts that think through the place of style in theory? What is there to be said anew about the rationale, the rhetoric, the history, the politics of that canon, assuming it exists at all? • Was theory really ever interested in style? With a number of notable exceptions, style contrives to be passed over in many commentaries of and on theory, its challenge not as explicitly addressed as might be expected. Is this explainable by speculating that style might actually be incidental to theory, conditional instead upon that towards which theory in each instance turns its gaze? • If the aim of philosophy has often appeared to be the achievement of a style-less writing, whereas literature has been the discourse marked by the cultivation and development of style, was it always theory’s agendato speak a certain philosophical commitment with and to style? If so, then the presentation of theory—theory’s style(s)—can perhaps be understood as definitional of theory. Can theory be understood as a re-mapping of the traditional borders of Darstellung and Dichtung? If so, how does this characterize the relationship between writing theory and styling theory? • If style is signature, and if style always finds itself within the order of the singular, what are the implications for thinking the style(s) of theory—this discourse that has significant investments in thinking through the singular? • Who are the authors who cultivate, develop and theorize style as their signature? How do their literary works illuminate style in theory and theory in style? • If the style of theory always “goes before it” and style is always implicitly recognizable, does this imply that style (and perhaps theory) is subordinate to an already existing aesthetic outlook? If this is so,and the recognition of style is taken to be inherently assimilative and open to recuperation, is it possible to speak of the style of singularity or the style of the event? What are the implications in this regard for the popular positioning of theory as operating from a critically interrogative “non-lieu”? • If we supposedly live, read, and write in a time “after theory,” why should the question of theory’s past, present, and future styles still be considered urgent? • Is there a dialectics of the posthumous in play when raising the question of style in theory? Are we simply commemorating a particular“generation,” or “a highpoint” of theory, or even an entire episteme when exploring the question of style in the wake of theory? What are we mourning, and what are we in wait of, when reopening the question of style in theory? • How does the question of style, in theory, now find itself related to“the post-humanities of tomorrow?” • If style is invested in writing as techne, how might the question of style, in theory, be reframed in the age of new media—in these times of greater critical attunement to what has been called technesis, of the quickly multiplying and reinvented resources of “electric language,” and of unprecedented manifestations of “archive fever”? How, in effect, is theory—the discourse on the letter—restyling itself in this digital age? • Is style, in theory, post-style, post-theory? Abstracts for papers, preferably stylishly brief, should be sent to styleintheory2009@um.edu.mt by 30 June 2009, copied to the addresses below. The organizers will also be glad to respond to questions about the onference. ivan.callus@um.edu.mt james.corby@um.edu.mt gloria.lauri-lucente@um.edu.mt Or visit the conference webpage here: http://www.um.edu.mt/events/styleintheory2009.

Hassan, Ihab. "Literary Theory in an Age of Globalisation." PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE 32.1 (2009).

When the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles. Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" Forget the blackbirds for now. The question is: how many ways are there of questioning theory in our age? And if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the earth wobbles under the weight of six billion beholders, what is beauty then? Or is beauty unmentionable in academe, despite the indiscretions of some scholars–Elaine Scarry, Fred Turner, Charles Jencks, among others–who have recently taken the name of beauty in vain? Again, forget beauty and the blackbirds; think of geography. Thomas Friedman went home one day and said to his wife, "Honey, I think the world is flat." He was echoing a technocrat in Bangalore who said to him, "Tom, the playing field is being leveled." Leveled or flattened, they both meant the world is very round: interactive, interdependent, instantaneous, contemporaneous–and viciously fractious withal. The Taliban vandalize priceless Buddhist statues; thieves armed with computers loot Aztec and Assyrian treasures; fatwa establish new guidelines for literary criticism; and the great museums of the world wrangle with governments, with history itself, about the patrimonies of art. This is a nasty condition, both flat and round. What kind of literary theory, what kind of aesthetics generally, can emerge from a world that defies Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries with every diurnal spin? The answer to these real and mock queries seems lost in partisanship and prejudice, abrasive ideologies and slick skepticism. Sane critics may look for a way out in ideas of pluralism, eclecticism, hybridity, and cosmopolitanism, recently propounded by Kwame Anthony Appiah. Sooner or later, though, these ideas crash on the realities of our time: "ethnic violence, economic volatility, and empires in decline," as Niall Ferguson puts it in The War of the World. Above all, they crash on the obdurate self, on self-interest without borders. Is there a way out? . . . Get the answer here: http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/philosophy_and_literature/32.1.hassan.html.

Edmundson, Mark. "Against Readings." CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION April 24, 2009.

If I could make one wish for the members of my profession, college and university professors of literature, I would wish that for one year, two, three, or five, we would give up readings. By a reading, I mean the application of an analytical vocabulary — Marx's, Freud's, Foucault's, Derrida's, or whoever's — to describe and (usually) to judge a work of literary art. I wish that we'd declare a moratorium on readings. I wish that we'd give readings a rest. This wish will strike most academic literary critics and perhaps others as well as — let me put it politely — counterintuitive. Readings, many think, are what we do. Readings are what literary criticism is all about. They are the bread and butter of the profession. Through readings we write our books; through readings we teach our students. And if there were no more readings, what would we have left to do? Wouldn't we have to close our classroom doors, shut down our office computers, and go home? The end of readings, presumably, would mean the end of our profession. So let me try to explain what I have in mind. . . . Read the rest here: http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i33/33b00601.htm.