Law & Humanities Blog

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Don't Tell Me Who Did It! I Paid a Lot For This Book! Posted: 26 Aug 2011 03:37 PM PDT A forthcoming study from two University of California, San Diego academics supports what I've thought for a long time: knowing whodunit in a mystery or thriller doesn't necessarily ruin the experience. I think it explains why some people (like me) re-read mysteries (and no, it's not because I can't remember the endings). Nicholas Christenfeld, one of the study's co-authors (I really like the presentation of his publications here), says the research explains why people actually enjoy knowing the ending. I understand that. They can concentrate on the journey along the way rather than obsess over the problem of the perpetrator. But some people don't agree. They like the mystery, and that's understandable as well. They like puzzles. That's why they read crime novels, and watch thrillers. This research by Dr. Christenfeld and his co-author Dr. Jonathan Leavitt might also explain part of the debate in magic circles over exposure.

Law & Humanities Blog

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France, the United States, and Coming to Terms With Slavery Posted: 25 Aug 2011 11:11 AM PDT Ariela J. Gross, University of Southern California Law School, has published All Born to Freedom? Comparing the Law and Politics of Race and the Memory of Slavery in the U.S. and France Today as USC Legal Studies Research Paper No. 11-18. Here is the abstract. Both the United States and France have seen a burgeoning of memorialization of slavery and abolition in recent years, and France has even passed a memorial law declaring slavery a crime against humanity. This Essay compares law, racial politics, and the memory of slavery in two nations trying to come to terms with their slave pasts. Despite important differences in their histories and civil rights regimes, I argue that in both France and the U.S., movements that oppose race-conscious law portray slavery as part of the deep past, and a generalized past detached from race, whereas those seeking some form of recognition or reparation emphasize that slavery is "not even past." In both countries, the originary revolutionary moment – in France, associated with the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and in the U.S.

Medical Humanities Blog

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On Structural Barriers to Interdisciplinarity Posted: 25 Aug 2011 10:42 AM PDT Jonathan Kahn (Hamline Univ.

Law & Humanities Blog

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King Lear and Leviathan Posted: 22 Aug 2011 02:55 PM PDT Alex Schulman, Duke University, has published From Lear to Leviathan: On States of Nature and Social Contracts in Shakespeare's Politics as an APSA 2011 Annual Meeting Paper. Here is the abstract. Philosophers have been more ready to incorporate insights from the dramas of William Shakespeare than political theorists, who have focused more of their energies on ancient Greek tragedy. I argue that Shakespeare's plays are a valuable and necessary resource for a political theory open to imaginative literature, by focusing specifically on King Lear and reading it against Hobbes's Leviathan. I argue that Shakespeare tragically depicts the same process – the recreation of sovereignty out of a state of nature and emergent social contract – that Hobbes argues for normatively. Shakespeare's play shows what is required of us psychologically and even emotionally in carrying out the Hobbesian process of disassembling hierarchical feudalism and constructing a modern political rationalism.

Medical Humanities Blog

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On Public Opinions on the Social Determinants of Health Posted: 22 Aug 2011 06:24 AM PDT Stephanie A. Robert and Bridget C. Booske (Univ.

Law & Humanities Blog

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The Myth of Rights Posted: 18 Aug 2011 09:34 AM PDT Jeffrey Dudas, University of Connecticut Department of Political Science, has published 'A Madman Full of Paranoid Guile': The Myth of Rights in the Modern American Mind, as an APSA 2011 Annual Meeting paper. Here is the abstract. Stuart Scheingold's path-breaking The Politics of Rights ignited scholarly interest in the political mobilization of rights. The book was a challenge to the reigning popular and scholarly common sense regarding the supposedly self-executing nature of rights (what Scheingold called the "myth of rights"). Rights, Scheingold argued, could be resources for the pursuit of social change; but their realization in court doctrine and legislative output was not itself tantamount to meaningful social change. Thus embedded in The Politics of Rights is skepticism (or at least ambivalence) about the utility of rights politics for social movements. Scheingold was not ambivalent about the moral or normative value of rights themselves, although he did argue that the realization of rights was not by itself enough to overcome the manifold inequalities that structure modern life. The Politics of Rights, accordingly, is clear-eyed, but not cynical about rights advocacy. It is thus surprising, and keenly revealing, that Scheingold's final work – The Political Novel, which is ostensibly not about rights at all – points to mass cynicism, alienation, and the collapse of faith in governing institutions and logics as the animating elements of modern liberal democracies, including especially the United States. That rights are a vital part of the civic mythology whose collapse defines modern times suggests that the civil rights context of aspiration and struggle in which Scheingold, and nearly all of his followers (this author included), have conceived rights may be unnecessarily narrow. Rights may also be embedded, that is, in the modern condition of alienation, despair, and felt powerlessness.

Law & Humanities Blog

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Voegelin and Metaphor Posted: 15 Aug 2011 03:19 PM PDT Glenn Hughes has published Voegelin's Use of Metaphor as an APSA 2011 Annual Meeting paper. Here is the abstract. This paper discusses Eric Voegelin's use of key metaphors at the core of his philosophy of existence. After a look at Voegeli's notion of "symbol," it offers definitions of analogy and metaphor, then goes on to introduce notions of "existential metaphors" and "primal metaphors," the latter defined as those pertaining to transcendence or to human participation in transcendence.

Law & Humanities Blog

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• A Peruvian Law and Literature Website
• Pretty Little Philosophers?
• Notre Ami Montequieu

A Peruvian Law and Literature Website Posted: 11 Aug 2011 12:31 PM PDT Welcome to a new website, Jus Literaria, created by students of law and literature at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (Lima, Peru), Facultadad de Derecho. At least, I think it's new, or at least the addition of the counter on the home page is new; it indicated (according to my translation which could very well be wrong) fewer than 30 total hits when I visited today. I've added a link to the site under "Resources" here at the Law and Humanities Blog. The website has links to figures in art and law (example: Daumier), founding scholars in the field of law and literature in various countries (Benjamin Cardozo and Richard Weisberg for the US), suggestions for secondary reading,  and links to associations. I'm not entirely sure why it's set up the way it is: why the French phrase "droit et littérature" takes you to a bibliography while the Italian equivalent takes you to an association, but maybe the logic will become clear with further use. At any rate, the site provides a lot of information, particularly for those interested in Latin American law and literature. I hope the students continue to keep it updated.