We are pleased to announce the Call-for-Papers for the Tenth International
Conference on New Directions in the Humanities.

TENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE HUMANITIES
Centre Mont-Royal, Montreal, Canada
14-17 June 2012
http://thehumanities.com/conference/

More information here.

Check out the Los Angeles Times' coverage of the panel discussion with Richard Banks!

Richard Banks's forthcoming book, Is Marriage for White People?, was featured in the Wall Street Journal. A panel discussion featuring Richard Banks, moderated by Sandy Banks of the LA Times, with commentaries from Camille Rich (USC Law), Kim Buchanan (USC Law), Melissa Murray (Berkeley Law) and Doug NeJaime (Loyola Law) was hosted by CLHC at the USC Law School at 4 PM on October 5th.

In an important new book hailed in reviews and comments from media outlets as diverse as the "Hinterland Express," "The Root" and the feminist law professors blog, Richard Banks asks the question "Is Marriage for White People?" His analysis raises other fascinating questions about the relationship between marriage and the social order: is marriage necessary at all? what is happening to professional woman in their personal lives -- and why does society care? what are the consequences of "marrying down" or remaining unmarried? is the black family, as Daniel Moynihan famously claimed, "a tangle of pathology," and has that "pathology" spread to other communities? Or, are there ways of organizing people into communities -- and individuals into couples -- which escape these boundaries of class, gender expectations, and the warfare between "love and marriage and the baby carriage" and "why cash out when you can keep on playing"? What do we want from our families, and what is it that African-American women and their marital choices have to do with our deepest sense of order, community, safety and love?

By now, your head should be full of questions and objections and fascinating tidbits of your own -- this is powerful material, and the Center for Law, History and Culture invites you to join us in taking these questions on directly. Professor Richard Banks (Stanford University Law) joined a panel of columnists including Kimberly S. Buchanan (USC Law), Melissa Murray (Stanford Law), Doug NeJaime (Loyola Law School) and Camille Gear Rich (USC Law) along with moderator Sandy Banks (Los Angeles Times) for a roundtable discussion of this important new book.

Is Marriage for White People? has garnered a considerable amount of attention online. Richard Banks sat down for an interview with TIME.com's Healthland. He also discussed the book with The Daily Beast. Both Kirkus and The Root have published reviews of the book as well. The New York Times published their review on September 18, 2011.

The Los Angeles Times also reviewed Is Marriage for White People? on September 29, 2011.

Richard's Banks' Twitter.

The book's official website.

The annual ASLCH's Conference will take place on March 16-17, 2012 at Texas Wesleyan in Fort Worth, TX.

October 15, 2011: Deadline for paper and panel proposals. See our website for registration information and details.

November 1, 2011: Deadline for application for the Julien Mezey Dissertation Award. Visit our website for more information, or contact Leonard Feldman.

December 2, 2011: Deadline for applications for our NEW graduate student workshop, March 15, 2012. Visit our website for more information, or contact Paul Passavant.

Want to form a panel, but don't know who might be interested? Post a query on our Facebook site!

The Art and Politics of Irony | L’art et la politique de l’ironie

12-14 April 2012 ~ Montréal, QC

An interdisciplinary conference hosted by the Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas, McGill University, in collaboration with Improvisation, Community and Social Practice (SSHRC-MCRI) and the Département d’études anglaises, Université de Montréal.

Call for papers:

“The ironist does not have the new within his power . . . he destroys the given actuality by the given actuality itself.” Søren Kierkegaard

Irony makes the world new by putting the world that exists in question. Its strength lies in its destabilizing power—it is the politics of art, the art of politics, and the language of dissent. By enabling critical representations of the world as it is known, but from within and against the familiarity of our own expectations, irony gives art and discourse special kinds of access to the public sphere, especially by mining beneath the given, the actual, and the known.

In politics, philosophy, art and literature, across post-modernism, post-colonialism, and globalization, the question of irony is of expanding relevance to a range of fields of cultural formation and inquiry. Yet it remains insufficiently noticed, understood, or theorized; ironically powerful and silent at once. What is the meaning of irony? What does it accomplish and exactly how and with what effects? Is irony impoverished or indispensable, disenchanted or enchanting, world-breaking or world-making?

Conference organizers invite proposals for papers addressing the public and public-making function of irony across time and through a range of contexts and media. Disciplines may include but are not limited to:

Architecture and Design
Art History
Classics
Film
Fine Arts
Gender and Sexuality
History
Law
Literature
Media and Communications
Musicology and Music Performance
Philosophy
Politics
Theatre and Performance

Proposals for complete panels as well as for individual papers in English or French are welcome. Researchers are invited to submit paper abstracts of 250 words and brief (2 page) cvs to: irony@mcgill.ca. Deadline for submissions: 30 September 2011

Announcing the publication of Teaching Law and Literature, edited by Austin Sarat, Catherine O. Frank and Matthew Anderson. Details.

Third Biennial Literature and Law Conference at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. Details.