Home »Unlabelled » Law & Humanities Blog

Law & Humanities Blog

Posted: 12 May 2011 11:54 AM PDT

Gregory Ablasky, University of Pennsylvania, has published Making Indians 'White': The Judicial Abolition of Native Slavery in Revolutionary Virginia and its Racial Legacy at 159 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1457 (2011). Here is the abstract.

This article traces the history of a series of "freedom suits" brought by Virginia slaves between 1772 and 1806, in which the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia judicially abolished nearly two centuries of American Indian slavery in the colony by ruling that slaves who could prove maternal descent from Native Americans were prima facie free. Delving first into the legal history of Indian slavery in colonial America, it then examines the doctrinal shift that led the courts to redefine natives as unfit subjects for enslavement, and argues that its roots lie in a racialization of slavery that separated Africans from Natives.

The final section explores the national legacy of these rulings, tracing the spread of these legal principles throughout the antebellum United States and discussing how the racial ideology that divided Native Americans and African-Americans continues to pose legal hurdles in contemporary Indian law cases involving tribal recognition and the Cherokee freedmen.Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Canadian Initiative in Law, Culture, and Humanities: Call For Papers

Posted: 12 May 2011 11:49 AM PDT

From Diana Young, an announcement:

The Canadian Initiative in Law Culture and the Humanities is inviting proposals for its biennial conference in October. The call for papers is attached, and can also be found on line here. Any inquiries should be directed to

CILCH@carleton.ca,

Canadian Initiative in Law, Culture, and Humanities

Carleton University

C473 Loeb Building

1125 Colonel By Drive

Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6

Canada

Dis/Locating Law

Biennial Conference of the

Canadian Initiative in Law, Culture and Humanities

Ottawa, Canada

October 20-22, 2011

CALL FOR PAPERS

Dislocation is a phenomenon of space, place and time. To dislocate something is to upset, complicate, or displace it. It involves getting things out of place, out of order, and out of time, or to question if things are indeed in their 'right' place and time. Dislocating, then, can be disorienting; it can dislodge comfortable assumptions, and it can unsettle, perhaps even painfully, what has gone before. Dislocation invites different perspectives, produces new cartographies, disrupts teleologies. This conference will feature papers and presentations which unsettle the place of law in relation to political, ethical, social, cultural or symbolic orders.

The Canadian Initiative in Law, Culture and Humanities (CILCH) invites you to participate in its 2011 conference on the theme of dis/locating law. The conference is interdisciplinary, drawing together scholars whose research addresses the intersections among culture, the humanities and law, including but not limited to studies of law and literature, law and film/television, cultural practices of regulation, mediation and law, intersections of cultural theory and the legal, alternative visions of legally coded practices, and so on.

This year's theme is intentionally broad in order to provide an open-ended focus for exploration. The conference is hosted with the goals of stimulating conversations among diverse scholars with shared interests, of continuing to foster the growing community of law, culture and humanities scholars in Canada, and of contributing to a global network of scholarship in these areas.

If you are interested in giving a paper, hosting a roundtable, or offering another form of presentation (either almost finished works or works in progress), please submit a proposal to CILCH @carleton.ca, as follows:

- title of proposed paper/presentation

- 200 word biography of presenter(s)

- contact information for presenter(s)

- an abstract outlining the paper/presentation of a maximum of 300 words

- detail on any technical requirements (data projector, sound system, etc.)

We very much look forward to receiving your proposal and to yet another productive and thought-provoking CILCH gathering.

The deadline for submission is June 15, 2011.