Home » Archives for September 2010

Law & Humanities Blog

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 08:16 AM PDT

Ah, the Socratic Method, pedagogical tool beloved of law students. NOT. Angus Kennedy examines some new books devoted to the life and legacy of Socrates here, who is supposed to have annoyed those around him with that device so much that they told him to begone permanently. Well, he did some other things that annoyed his neighbors too. Notes Mr.

Kennedy, "In Plato's Meno, Socrates offends a man called Anytus by suggesting that even great men such as Themistocles and Thucydides were not capable of teaching their sons to be good. Anytus warns him to be careful, that he is 'too ready to speak evil of men'. It was Anytus who brought the prosecution against Socrates in 399 BC, on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth, which led to Socrates' execution."

Science and the Criminal Mind

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 07:56 AM PDT

In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Evan R. Goldstein reviews Douglas Starr's new book exploring the origins of criminology, The Killer of Little Shepherds.

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Law & Humanities Blog

Storytelling Across the Curriculum

Posted: 29 Sep 2010 03:24 PM PDT

Carolyn Grose, William Mitchell College of Law, has published Storytelling Across the Curriculum: From Margin to Center, from Clinic to the Classroom, in volume 7 of the Journal of the Association of Legal Writing Directors (2010). Here is the abstract.

Narrative theory and storytelling can be used throughout the law school curriculum, cutting across types of courses and types of lawyering. I teach skills, doctrinal, and clinical courses, and I use narrative theory and storytelling in all three, always with the same goal: to help students recognize that as lawyers, they are not only hearers and tellers of stories, but also, and perhaps most important, constructors of stories.

I use the term "narrative theory" to describe the study of story construction, which is different from - though clearly related to - story telling. Construction is the act of building: putting together the elements that comprise the story and then writing it down.

Performance of the story - reading it, telling it, enacting it - comes later.

In this piece, I develop the idea of using storytelling across the curriculum to teach students critical thinking and reflection about their role as lawyers. In Part One, I describe the importance of storytelling and stories in the craft of lawyering. Part Two describes my own teaching in the context of narrative theory and practice, and it analyzes how and why this context achieves the goal of developing students' critical thinking skills and reflective practice. The piece concludes with the suggestion that narrative theory and storytelling as a pedagogy used systematically across individual courses and the curriculum has the potential to transform a student's experience of law school, resulting in her development as an empowered, reflective, and socially responsible member of the legal profession, regardless of the kind of law she practices or the kinds of clients she represents.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The Magic of the Courtroom

Posted: 29 Sep 2010 07:58 AM PDT

The Eleventh Judicial Circuit and Miami-Dade County reached back--far back--to re-enact Al Capone's perjury trial. Partly out of nostalgia, and partly out of a sense of the importance of the law, the people involved took on key roles in the decades-old proceeding to bring key figures to life. In the peanut gallery, some adults with an interest in Capone, and in the historic, and some ninth graders who may now know who Al Capone was. Or not. More here from the New York Times.

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Medical Humanities Blog

Call for Applications: Tenure-Track Position, Department of English (Medical Narrative)

Posted: 29 Sep 2010 10:52 AM PDT

Good lord; there's been a sighting of that most rare of creatures, a TT position in the medical humanities (well, to be precise, it's a TT English position with a focus on medical narrative. But still!):

Saint Louis University, a Catholic, Jesuit institution dedicated to student learning, research, health care, and service, invites applications for a full-time tenure-track Assistant Professor of English. Demonstrated teaching excellence and research potential required. Candidates should demonstrate involvement in English Education, with research interests in medical narrative and fiction from 1700 to the present. The appointee will serve as the English Faculty Liaison for a long-established advance college credit program (the 1818 Program) which serves regional high schools. The current teaching load is 2/2, with reduction for administrative service. The English Department offers B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. programs, with an undergraduate Medical Humanities Certificate. The person appointed to this position will teach undergraduate and graduate courses. Candidates should have completed the Ph.D. by August, 2011. Start date: August 1, 2011.

Candidates must submit a letter, c.v., and writing sample (15-20 pages)
online at http://www.jobs.slu.edu. Deadline for applications: November 1,
2010. Additional materials may be requested at that time. All applications will be acknowledged by e-mail. Interviews at MLA. Contact information: Sara van den Berg, Chair, vandens@slu.edu. Saint Louis University is an Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity Employer (AA/EOE), and encourages nominations of and applications from women and members of underrepresented groups.

Good luck!

(h/t Lit&Med_ASBH listserv)

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Law & Humanities Blog

The Trial

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 08:00 AM PDT

From the New York Times, an account of the legal battle over Franz Kafka literary legacy. The parties: the National Library of Israel and the heirs of Max Brod, who handled Mr. Kafka's estate.

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Medical Humanities Blog

Call for Applications: MA Track in Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics

Posted: 24 Sep 2010 10:21 AM PDT

The Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics at SUNY Stony Brook is now accepting applications for an eponymous masters track culminating in a Master of Arts in the Biological Sciences (again, note the track).

You can find more details about the program and the faculty here.

Welcome aboard!

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Law & Humanities Blog

Camus' "The Outsider" and Criminal Punishment Theory

Posted: 23 Sep 2010 11:45 AM PDT

Emlyn Walter Cruickshank, Australian National University College of Law, has published Dialogues of Indifference: Albert Camus' 'The Outsider' and Criminal Punishment Theory , as ANU College of Law Research Paper No. 10-29.

Here is the abstract.

This paper was written as an honours paper under the supervision of Dr Tony Connolly.

Upon reading Albert Camus' 'The Outsider', the curious feeling arises that despite his indifference at having killed a man, Meursault is not the real villain of the story. The villains are those who punish him and the institution through which this punishment is administered. This feeling rests upon a strong sense of injustice – a sense that the institution of law did not treat Meursault as it could have, and certainly not as it should. Camus thereby raises genuine issue that philosophers of criminal punishment ought to be concerned with.

Camus articulates an improper and absurd administration of punishment. In so doing he gives an alternate framework with which to appraise prevailing theories of criminal punishment. My primary thesis is that those sympathetic to Camus' existentialist concern should be more inclined toward punishment justified as communicative retribution. The theories of utilitarianism and other variants of retributivism - intrinsic desert, unfair advantage and censure - are either disinterested in the behaviour of Camus' court or implicitly condone it.

Secondarily, and by necessary implication, I advocate the worth of an interdisciplinary approach to the development of jurisprudential thought generally. Building upon the Law and Literature movement, this paper impresses the value in using critical images of the law cast by existentialist literature in order to determine the theoretical framework which best justifies the existence of a legal practise and regulates the adjudicative processes through which it is administered. Further, it examples how this can be achieved.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link. Read More... Law & Humanities Blog

UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

DDH 7 debrief

Posted: 23 Sep 2010 01:52 AM PDT

Last night we were discussing Alan Lui's 2003 paper entitled The Humanities: A Technical Profession. Lui raises questions about the concept of Knowledge, of protocols, organisation and information behaviour and the institutional nature of the humanities. Lui discusses in his paper, the idea that humanities scholars are now “knowledge workers” and that a distinguishing [...]

UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

The MA/MSc in Digital Humanities

Posted: 22 Sep 2010 08:38 AM PDT

Here we proudly present our new publicity material for the MA/MSc in Digital Humanities, designed by Melissa Terras and Rudolf Ammann (Rudolf previously designed the UCLDH logo, and has been working with us to keep up our digital identity since). We had to follow quite strict style guidelines from UCL Communications. They tend to [...]

Medical Humanities Blog

Call for Papers (New Journal): Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics: A Journal of Qualitative Research

Posted: 21 Sep 2010 12:40 PM PDT

A new journal published by JHU Press has put out its initial Call for Papers. The journal is entitled Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics: A Journal of Qualitative Research. All three of these descriptors are central to the medical humanities, so this looks to be an exciting and promising journal. Here are some details on the approach and scope of the journal:

Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics (NIB) provides a forum for exploring current issues in bioethics through the publication and analysis of personal stories, qualitative and mixed-methods research articles, and case studies. Articles may address the experiences of patients and research participants, as well as health care workers and researchers. NIB is dedicated to fostering a deeper understanding of bioethical issues by engaging rich descriptions of complex human experiences. While NIB upholds appropriate standards for narrative inquiry and qualitative research, it seeks to publish articles that will appeal to a broad readership of health care providers and researchers, bioethicists, sociologists, policy makers, and others.

Thick content, indeed!

And here are the guidelines for submission. NIB has planned three symposia to kick things off for Volume 1:

Issue 1, July 2011: Living with Conflicts of Interest in Medicine (Symposium Editor, James DuBois)

Preference given to story proposals received by October 15.

Issue 2, September 2011: Nursing Aides in Long-Term Care Facilities (Symposium Editor, Amy Haddad)

Preference given to story proposals received by October 15.

Issue 3, December 2011: Experiences of Hospitalized Psychiatric Patients (Symposium Editor, Charles Lidz)

Preference given to story proposals received by October 15.

Sounds terrific, so do consider submitting your work.

(h/t Lit&MED_ASBH listserv)

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Law & Humanities Blog

Prison, Hip Hop, and Islam

Posted: 20 Sep 2010 11:03 AM PDT

SpearIt, Saint Louis University School of Law, has published Spreading the Faith: Music and Culture, in Muslims in U.S. Prisons (Nawal Ammar, ed.; Lynne Rienner Publications) (forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

This chapter argues that prison and hip hop culture are major factors in the popularity and growth of Islam in the United States. The connections among Islam, prisons, and hip hop culture are profound, and all three share a deeply intertwined history; the more one studies Islam in the U.S., the student will be led to the powerful sanctuaries of prisons and hip hop culture, where Islam's presence is pronounced. This work combines textual analysis of musical cultural productions and scholarly research on prison culture to show hip hop and prison culture as two primary sites of religious conversion. In these cultural spheres, Islam has found a steady stream of new recruits which contribute to Islam as the fastest growing religion in the United States.

The full text is not currently available from SSRN.

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UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

ICA Debate: Paywalls, E-books and the Death of Print

Posted: 20 Sep 2010 01:40 AM PDT

There is in an interesting debate to be held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts on the 21st October 2010. UCLDH is very interested in the future of the publishing and the influence of e-books and paywall, and is working on the INKE project, researching to advance our understanding of how reading texts and [...]

Law & Humanities Blog

New Legal Literary Prize

Posted: 17 Sep 2010 07:06 AM PDT

The University of Alabama School of Law is launching a prize to honor the best book in legal fiction published in the year. It is named after Harper Lee, the author of the iconic To Kill a Mockingbird. The first prize will be given out next year, to the book published in 2010 that "best exemplifies the role of lawyers in society and lawyers' power to effect change."

More here.

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UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

Digital Humanities at Bangor

Posted: 17 Sep 2010 02:50 AM PDT

Today I am giving a keynote lecture at Bangor University as part of their AHRC funded CEDAR (Collaborative Digital Research in the Humanities) doctoral programme. Today is the final symposium and the whole programme seems to have been an interesting way to introduce graduate students to digital methods and allow them to present about their [...]

Medical Humanities Blog

Call for Papers: 5th UK & Ireland Postgraduate Bioethics Conference

Posted: 16 Sep 2010 06:36 PM PDT

The 5th UK and Ireland Postgraduate Bioethics Conference:

Social Scientific Approaches to Bioethics: Methods and Methodologies.
The 5th to the 7th of January 2011.
The Wellcome Conference Centre, Euston Road, London.

Funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness and Cesagen.

Also Sponsored by Nuffield Bioethics, Wiley-Blackwell, and the School of Law, QUB.

Guest speakers: Prof Alan Crib (CBAS, KCL); Leigh Turner (University of Minnesota); Dr Alexandra Plows (Bangor) and Dr Duncan Wilson (CHSTM, Manchester)

Post the empirical turn scholars at work in bioethics have been making continually greater use of social scientific approaches. One the one hand this can be seen as a fulfilment of the promise of bioethics as a truly interdisciplinary area of research, on the other we risk becoming as a recent paper has it "Jack of all trades, master of none" (Clinical Ethics 3(4) 2008). This conference seeks to go some way to engaging with this issue through offering four masterclasses on bioethics and an area of social scientific research. These will be focussed on contemporary history; researching publics; sociology; and empirical ethics. Each of these masterclasses will be prefaced by an established academic giving a presentation on the methodological contours of their approach. We seek postgraduate participants for the proposed masterclasses as well as paper presentations which address the conference theme. There are also some limited audience member places. Preference may be given to those which address the conference them and fall within the four areas identified.

There will also be a plenary lecture and some 'added value' sessions on academic life. These will include talks by funders, a session by early career researchers and a dedicated networking event, will also form part of the programme.

Please note there are limited presentation slots, places in the masterclasses and conference venue capacity. We will be making our decisions on the basis of addressing the topic at hand, presentation panel and masterclass coherence. There may be some audience only places available once the selction process has been completed.

The conference web site is here.

Read More... Medical Humanities Blog

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