In New Orleans last June, as part of the Law and Society Association's annual meeting, the Consortium sponsored three professional development panels meant to serve people at teaching-centered institutions, within undergraduate studies programs everywhere, and who are graduate students and faculty interested in pedagogy and student research.   As part of the program, we sponsored a Teaching Café, featuring ideas from faculty at a range of institutions who use moot courts, mock trials, legislative lobbying, citizen-police training, and so much more to engage students in an immersive undergraduate legal studies education.
 
A second panel focused on the relationship between legal studies and the law school environment, from the perspective of undergraduate faculty.  In conversation with audience members, the panelists noted the diversity of student expectations for undergraduate legal studies: many want to go to law school, some into the field of criminal justice, and some go directly into the workforce.  Still others hope to pursue doctoral education in a field related to “law and society.”  Given this varied set of expectations from our undergraduates, as well as our institutional relationships (to law schools and offices of admissions, for example), and our own intellectual commitments, how can we best serve our students in learning about the connections between law, society, and culture?
 
CULJP also sponsored a panel on landing a law and society job at a teaching-centered institution.  This panel was exceptionally well-attended, with nearly fifty attendees interested in thinking about the job search process.  Our panelists, from both teaching-centered and research-oriented institutions, represented a range of professional identities – from newly hired faculty to department chairs and deans. Those who attended the panel asked a variety of questions that ranged from how to prepare a teaching statement for a job in an interdisciplinary department, to how to present oneself in a cover letter, to the benefits and drawbacks of applying for jobs not specifically listed as law and society but that have the potential to allow scholars to continue to do law and society work within specific disciplines.
 
Were you an attendee or panelist at one of these professional development events at Law and Society 2016?  If so, what did you find most useful?  What did you learn?  Answer in comments to keep the dialogue alive – and look for more opportunities like this to connect, in Mexico City 2017!

amThe Consortium is hosting three Professional Development Panels, a CULJP Board meeting, and a coffee (half) hour.  Board members who attend will also be happy to meet with individuals representing member programs, or those who want more information about what we are up to, and how you can be involved.

Thursday, June 2nd, 8:15 – 10:00 am “The Relationship Between Undergraduate Legal Studies and Law School Education, a Perspective from Undergrad Professors” --  NOLA Marriott  Salon D (3rd floor) 

• Chair: Renee Cramer, Drake University   
• Participants: 
• Daniel LaChance, Emory University   
• Jinee Lokaneeta, Drew University   
• Aaron Lorenz, Ramapo College   
• Jamie Rowen, University of Massachusetts, Amherst   

Friday, June 3rd, 2:45 – 4:30pm “Landing a Law and Society Job at a Teaching Institution”
NOLA Marriott Salon D (3rd floor) 
The academic job market is a difficult place to be - and candidates need to think through how to present themselves for a wide array of positions. Interdisciplinary legal studies education is a unique and vibrant field - and applying for jobs within it is different than applying for positions within more standard disciplinary homes at research-focused institutions. This roundtable includes faculty from several undergraduate teaching-centered institutions, who hire often in the fields related to law and society. It also includes faculty who mentor graduate students towards these positions. The roundtable will offer our collective reflections on, and advice for, the job market for these types of positions. We will discuss cover letters, teaching portfolios, the 'job talk' and teaching demonstration, and the intangible things we look for, when evaluating candidates to become our colleagues.

• Chair: Renee Cramer, Drake University   
• Participants: 
• Paul Collins, University of Massachusetts, Amherst   
• Renee Cramer, Drake University  
• Sarah Hampson, University of Washington Tacoma   
• Aaron Lorenz, Ramapo College  
• Anna-Maria Marshall, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign   
• Shannon Portillo, University of Kansas   
• Mary Nell Trautner, University at Buffalo, SUNY   
• Monica Williams, Weber State University   

Saturday, June 4th, 8:30 – 9:30 am  CULJP Board Meeting [Location TBA – check onsite message board]

Saturday, June 4th, 9:30 – 10:00 am CULJP Coffee Hour [Location TBA – check onsite message board] 

Saturday, June 4th, 4:45 – 6:30 pm “Teaching Café” -- NOLA Marriott Bissonet (3rd floor) 
At this "cafe" style panel, you can move from table to table, talking about the different approaches to undergraduate teaching brought by each of the several participants. From lobbying state legislators, to ride alongs with city police, faculty in this cafe engage students in a wide range of experiential learning. They use moot courts, mock trials, and a research lab to immerse their students in undergraduate legal education.

• Chair: Renee Cramer, Drake University   
• Participants:
• Jean Carmalt, John Jay College of Criminal Justice   
• William Garriott, Drake University   
• Lauren McCarthy, University of Massachusetts Amherst   
• Danielle Rudes, George Mason University   
• Mihaela Serban, Ramapo College of New Jersey  
• Lori Sexton, University of Missouri, Kansas City  
• Michael Yarbrough, John Jay College (CUNY)   

The 112th APSA Annual Meeting will be in Philadelphia September 1 – 4, 2016. The theme will be “Great Transformations: Political Science and the Big Questions of Our Time.” The deadline for proposals is January 8, 2016. 

Indivual divisions have their own calls for papers; calls from the division of Teaching and Learning in Political Science and Political Science Education (below) may be of particular interest to CULJP blog readers. 
All divisions listed at: http://community.apsanet.org/annualmeeting/call/divisions#DIV26​ 

DIVISION 9: TEACHING AND LEARNING IN POLITICAL SCIENCE
Division Chair: Mitchell Brown, Auburn University
The discipline of political science has changed tremendously over time, from the substance of our research, to the methods used to produce it, to the deliver of this to students in the classroom. In addition, the classroom itself has been transformed over time, including the characteristics of both learners and teachers, methods of instruction, and the medium of instruction. Consistent with this year’s conference theme, we encourage paper and panel proposals that address these issues, exploring how the transformations in the discipline have changed education in the discipline. Other issues to consider could include:

COURSE-SPECIFIC STRATEGIES AND PEDAGOGICAL TOOLS.  What innovations, simulations, role-play exercises, blended or on-line learning approaches, or class activities have developed that enhance teaching and learning? 

INFORMATION LITERACY AND DATA ANALYSIS. How has the wide-spread availability of material, some based in fact and some fabricated, changed the demands on what and how we teach as well as the classroom experience? What techniques best facilitate the information literacy of our students?  What skills do our students, both undergraduate and graduate, need to have to be successful after graduation? How are these skills best developed?

ASSESSMENT. How has the transformation of the discipline changed teaching and learning with respect to assessment of our efforts? Which assessment approaches and tools are most useful, and which are only burdensome? What impact has the increased focus on assessment had on our students, courses or departments?

Per the mission of this section and as the questions above suggest, we encourage a wide range of topics for papers and panels, including but not limited to innovations in curriculum and program design, classroom teaching, instructional technology, experiential learning, online courses, graduate training, undergraduate research, advising and mentoring, administration, and assessment.  Priority will be placed on proposals that have a systematic evidence base where appropriate. The Teaching and Learning section is strongly committed to honoring the diversity of institutions with which ASPA members are associated, and we welcome submissions from political scientists at community colleges and two-year institutions, as well as from four-year colleges and universities.


DIVISION 10: POLITICAL SCIENCE EDUCATION
Division Chair: Patrick McKinlay, Morningside College
Political Science Education encourages the development and delivery of innovative pedagogies that provide political science students dynamic learning experiences that inspire civic engagement, curiosity regarding political change, and the acquisition of skills and knowledge to understand change and develop strategies to respond to change.  The theme for the 2016 Annual Meeting is Great Transformations:  Political Science and the Big Questions of Our Time, a focus central to the mission of political science education and to learning itself.  Great Transformations include the extraordinary shifts that often capture most political science inquiry: revolutions, regime change, conflict and peace, the emergence of new political actors, the dawning of political ideals.  Big Questions are often examined by political scientists to trace more incremental developments that exhibit significant but more long-term changes that transform the political environment including climate change, rising inequalities, or shifts in prevailing social values.

Transformation obviously lies at the heart of political science education in so far as the educational experience is itself potentially transformational.   What new questions and patterns are changing the topics we teach, the methods of inquiry we adopt, the media we utilize to engage students in these profound questions? What new pedagogies are being deployed to introduce students, at all levels, to the Big Questions facing them as citizens and future leaders?  How is our assessment of student learning attending to changes in our student profile, their preparation for higher education, shifts toward vocational applications, and implications of their education for post-graduate personal and professional success?  As the Annual Meeting theme encourages papers focused on Great Transformation and Big Questions, we encourage similar themes for the section that highlight research on transformation in the delivery and practice of political science education.  How is the classroom and lecture being transformed by changes in technology that augment student learning?  How do new pedagogical practices including simulations, cross-disciplinary and inter-institutional interactions, and others changes in educational practice provide students opportunities for developing skills for effective citizenship and political analysis?  How might students be encouraged to develop their own big questions and research designs?  What pedagogies provide new avenues for accessibility to political inquiry, including new experiments in internships, externships, and off-campus learning?  How is our political science curricula evolving to address the many transformations not only in the political environment, but in higher educational generally through interdisciplinary, inter-institutional, and public-private collaborations?  How do the various political science sub-disciplines re-imagine their pedagogy to best engage their students in grasping the transformative forces changing the political realm?

We encourage proposals on a wide array of political science education initiatives and research, including innovative approaches to disseminating using diverse formats.  Another transformation encouraged by the theme is for sections to experiment with how to best utilize the Annual Meeting for extraordinary exchange and mutual learning through an openness to diverse formats for proposals.  Indeed, political science education has a long history of utilizing a broad range of program formats.  While individuals may propose traditional papers and panels, the Association is also interested in other settings including Mini-conferences that are extended time-blocs focused on some theme, Research Cafés, Sequential Paper presentations where scholars can receive feedback from an exclusive discussant, Roundtables, Author(s) Meet Critics sessions, Short Courses (perhaps not limited to Wednesday), and Poster Presentations with Discussants. 
Per the mission of this section and as the questions above suggest, we encourage a wide range of topics for papers and (theme) panels, including but not limited to innovations in curriculum and program design, classroom teaching, instructional technology, experiential learning, online courses, graduate training, undergraduate research, advising and mentoring, administration, and assessment. 

The Political Science Education section is strongly committed to honoring the diversity of institutions with which ASPA members are associated, and we welcome submissions from political scientists at community colleges and two-year institutions, as well as from four-year colleges and universities.

The ASLCH sends word: 

We are pleased to announce that the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities will be held at the University of Connecticut Law School, in Hartford, CT on April 1-2nd, 2016. We invite your participation.  Please note, panel and paper proposals are due Thursday, October 15th, 2015.

The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities is an organization of scholars engaged in interdisciplinary, humanistically-oriented legal scholarship. The Association brings together a wide range of people engaged in scholarship on legal history, legal theory and jurisprudence, law and cultural studies, law and anthropology, law and literature, law and the performing arts, and legal hermeneutics. We want to encourage dialogue across and among these fields about issues of interpretation, identity, and values, about authority, obligation, and justice, and about law's role as a constituent part of cultures and communities.

If you have any general questions about the conference, please do not hesitate to ask me at jmartel@sfsu.edu. For matters related to the program or its organization, please write to Simon Stern simon.stern@utoronto.ca.  I want to thank the members of the program committee, chaired by Simon Stern for all their hard work on the Call for Papers. 

This year’s conference theme is Reading Race, Writing Race and Living Race
 “Within the text of the law there is an afterlife of slavery … as matters of aesthetic and legal representation … as an aesthetics of legal representation”
–Stephen Best, The Fugitive's Properties: Law and the Poetics of Possession, 14

The question of race is central to historical and contemporary violence, to material conditions, reproduction and global politics. In the US, recent police violence against African Americans has again raised the ongoing question of the significance of lawful violence, of law’s complicity, in upholding the state. Penal law is implicated in the incarceration of African-Americans in the US, Aboriginal communities in Australia, and Indigenous peoples in Canada, demonstrating a settler-colonial preoccupation for using race and racial profiling to mask and further colonial ends. In the context of securitised responses to migration, the onshore refugee applicant speaks as an already criminalised subject, as ‘an illegal immigrant’ or as an ‘undocumented migrant’. Under the conditions of continuing colonization, statutory schemes such as Australia’s Northern Territory Intervention target Aboriginal populations and make such populations subject to state violence. These examples raise the urgent question of law’s relation to, and production of, violence through race. From transitional justice to human rights processes, race is foregrounded at scenes and struggles in which law seeks to respond to and adjudicate violence, and assert its own authority.
 
This conference seeks research drawn from multiple disciplines and jurisdictions that addresses the following questions: How might we think of the relations among law, culture, history, and the shaping of racial imaginaries? How is law complicit and productive of violence? How should we read the legal and cultural forms that produce the conditions of this violence? What kinds of legal, critical, and cultural practices can intervene in both this violence, and the conditions that are complicit with it? How might legal, critical, and cultural projects provide counter-narratives and counter-archives to the juridical imaginary of responsibility for historical and contemporary violence? How do historical and contemporary readings of race relate? Are anti-racist forms of law and state possible, and what would they look like? How might law be enlisted in the development of new racial formations? How should we re-think critical legal feminisms, and Marxism, through the category of race? How can we devise legal, critical and cultural forms that are attentive to race, and make visible this legal violence? What is the significance of ‘reading’ race—what is the materiality in the metaphor?
 
This conference seeks to develop conversations regarding the roles of representation, affect and imagination in the ongoing relationship of law to concepts of race, justice, sovereignty, captivity, history. We seek to examine legal and cultural practices of representation for their juridical, as well as cultural, effects. Questions of genre, narrative, and aesthetics are not only sites of critique, but also become potential sites of theoretical intervention, and intervention into projects of social justice.
 
In addition to sessions that connect to the conference theme, examples of other types of sessions we expect people to organize include: 
History, Memory and Law; Law and Literature; Human Rights and Cultural Pluralism; Speech, Silence, and the Language of Law; Judgment, Justice, and Law; Beyond Identity; The Idea of Practice in Legal Thought; Metaphor and Meaning; Representing Legality in Film and Mass Media; Anarchy, Liberty and Law; What is Excellence in Interpretation?; Ethics, Religion, and Law; Moral Obligation and Legal Life; The Post-Colonial in Literary and Legal Study; Processes and Possibilities in Interdisciplinary Law Teaching. 

We urge those interested in attending to consider submitting complete panels, and we hope to encourage a variety of formats-roundtables, sessions at which everyone reads the papers in advance, sessions in which commentators respond to a single paper. We invite proposals for session in which the focus is on pedagogy or methodology, for author-meets-readers sessions organized around important books in the field, or for sessions in which participants focus on performance (theatrical, filmic, musical, poetic).
If you are inclined to register sooner here is the link:
http://www.eventbrite.com/e/annual-meeting-association-for-the-study-of-law-culture-the-humanities-registration-16184614618
 
As you’ll see, we have a new system for registration. For the first round of registration our membership fee has gone up very slightly to $37.74. For the second round of registration, we will give you a code with which to register sometime around the new year.
We hope to see as many of you as possible in 2016 in Hartford!

The Mid-Atlantic Law & Society Association (MALSA) will host its third conference at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City on October 10, 2015. We hope you will join us in our efforts to build a vibrant regional network of sociolegal scholars.

We seek papers, panels, roundtables, and pedagogy workshops aimed at stimulating conversations across the range of law and society topics and disciplines. Proposals for individual papers and fully formed sessions are welcome, as are proposals for pedagogy workshops on activities and assignments you use in your law and society teaching. We also invite scholars new to law and society research to submit their ideas-in-progress for Socio-Legal Individual Mentoring (SLIM) sessions, where they can receive individualized feedback on substance and/or methods from an experienced law & society scholar about how to turn an idea into a research project (subject to availability of senior mentors with relevant expertise).

Accepted papers will draw on theoretical, empirical, and pedagogical sociolegal scholarship. Papers focused solely on doctrinal analysis are unlikely to be invited. Though presentations on any topic are welcome, we are especially interested in panels that focus on areas of current interest and controversy in the region, such as fracking, policing and race, political corruption. We also welcome panels that bring together practitioners and scholars.

The deadline for all proposals is August 21, 2015. Proposals should include an abstract of approximately 250 words; panel proposals should include a list of participants. You may also use the link below to volunteer to serve as a panel chair/discussant or to serve as a SLIM senior scholar for a colleague seeking to develop a sociolegal research project. Accepted presenters will be notified by September 7

To submit a proposal or volunteer, please complete this form:  https://midatlanticlsa.wordpress.com/call-for-participation/

Please direct inquiries (but not proposal submissions!) to: malsa2015jj@gmail.com

*Mary Nell Trautner is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, and a CULJP board member.

Fall Conference on David Engel’s “The Oven Bird’s Song”
Baldy Center for Law & Social Policy, University at Buffalo, SUNY
October 23, 2015

On October 23, 2015, the Baldy Center for Law & Social Policy at the University at Buffalo, SUNY is holding a one-day conference about David Engel’s 1984 article, “The Oven Bird’s Song: Insiders, Outsiders, and Personal Injuries in an American Community.” For over 30 years, this article has been a central work in the law & society field and is widely considered to be part of the law & society "canon." Engel’s article was among the first in the field to articulate what is now a taken-for-granted idea: that people’s ideas about law and the decisions they make to mobilize law are shaped by community norms and cultural context. It has been reprinted in several law and society edited volumes (including the first Law & Society Reader) and was recently featured as one of just 20 "exemplars" of law and society research spanning from 1963 to 2003 in Schmidt and Halliday's (2009) volume, Conducting Law and Society Research: Reflections on Methods and Practices. In the conference, we will be reflecting on the origins, impact, and future influence of this important work.

I hope you can join us, we’d love for you to attend and share your own thoughts about “The Oven Bird’s Song”! Here’s a peek at the day’s lineup:

Panel 1: Development and Contextualization of "The Oven Bird's Song"
Panelists in this session will talk about the broader context in which the article was written, both in terms of the then-emerging theoretical perspectives in law & society and in terms of Engel’s university context.

• Marc Galanter, Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Wisconsin 
• Barbara Yngvesson, Professor Emerita of Anthropology, Hampshire College
• Stewart Macaulay, Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Wisconsin 
• Alfred Konefsky, Professor of Law, University at Buffalo

Panel 2: Institutional Actors and "The Oven Bird"
This panel addresses the importance of Engel's article to scholars working in a range of areas in law & society. Panelists will discuss the impact of "The Oven Bird" on research on the legal profession, juries and jury decision making, law and social policy, and how ordinary people make decisions about mobilizing law.

• Anna-Maria Marshall, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Illinois
• Valerie Hans, Professor, Cornell Law School
• Lynn Mather, Professor of Law, University at Buffalo
• Eve Darian-Smith, Professor of Global & International Studies, UC, Santa Barbara

Panel 3: Pedagogical Opportunities and Challenges of "The Oven Bird's Song"
This panel offers different disciplinary takes on the article from a pedagogical perspective. We feature panelists from law schools and several social science departments to discuss how they teach the article to law students, undergraduates, and graduate students, including approaches, responses, and challenges.

• Neil Vidmar, Professor of Law and Psychology, Duke University
• Michael W. McCann, Professor of Sociology, University of Washington
• Renee Cramer, Associate Professor of Law, Politics, and Society, Drake University 
• Anne Bunting, Associate Professor of Sociology, York University

Panel 4: Future Orientations: What’s the Research Agenda for the Coming Years?
"The Oven Bird's Song" was written under the influence of the interpretive turn of law and society, which was the new, exciting theoretical framework of that time. Panelists in this session look forward and discuss the new theoretical frameworks of today and the role that "The Oven Bird" plays (or will play) in the future of the field.  

• Yoshitaka Wada, Professor, Waseda Law School (Japan)
• Anne Bloom, Associate Director, Civil Justice Program, Loyola Law School
• Jamie G. Longazel, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work at the University of Dayton
• Scott Barclay, Professor of Political Science and History, Drexel University

David Engel will conclude the day’s conference with a brief response to panelists’ comments and ideas, and a discussion of his forthcoming book, Why We Don’t Sue: Explaining the Absence of Claims in Injury Cases.

Feel free to be in touch if you have questions about the conference or traveling to/visiting Buffalo!

2016 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference
Conference Theme:  Rethinking the Way We Teach:  High-Impact Methods In the Classroom
February 12-14, 2016
Portland, Oregon | Marriott Portland Downtown Waterfront

Join us for a unique meeting to promote greater understanding of high-impact practices and innovative methodologies for the political science classroom. The conference provides a forum for scholars to participate in the scholarship of teaching and learning, share pedagogical techniques, and discuss trends in political science education. We welcome proposals from educators at all levels who teach political science and related subjects—university faculty and administrators, high school teachers, graduate students, research scholars, and others. 

We invite proposals for paper presentations and interactive workshops. Papers are presented in a collaborative working group environment, in which the participants in a theme learn about and discuss each other’s research for the duration of the conference. This working group model has proven to be highly effective at enhancing the instructional effectiveness and scholarly productivity of conference attendees. 

Workshops provide participants with hands-on experience in the use of practical instructional methods that they can take with them to their home institutions. Examples of workshops at previous Teaching and Learning Conferences include using mapping software to teach students how to visualize political information, using games to teach theories of political violence, and how to assess curricula on the basis of students’ knowledge of and skills in environmental sustainability. At this year’s conference, we are particularly interested in having a workshop on teaching about the 2016 elections and cutting edge election techniques.

More information here. Questions? Contact meeting@apsanet.org.