Call For Papers: Legal and Institutional Translation Policies

Leuven University (Belgium) is organizing a conference on the use of translation in public legal and administrative institutions, in the past and present. They would like to attract researchers from a variety of fields, including legal history, and are encouraging legal historians to consider applying to participate. The deadline for abstracts is February 1 2018. Registration to attend is currently open. More details may be found here: https://kuleuvencongres.be/litp2018

From the conference website: “Firstly, [the conference organizers wish] to document the state of affairs of the expanding and interdisciplinary field of legal and institutional translation, by approaching the latter through the lens of ‘translation policy’. This umbrella concept, as derived from Spolsky’s view on language policy (Gonzalez Nuñez 2016), embraces many features of translational communication: rules, agency, practices and values. In addition, it enables framing of translation across the separate disciplines’ realm, and so becomes a binding factor between the study of forms and techniques, multilingual and transnational translation forms, issues of governance and linguistic justice. Taking stock of translation policy as applied to legal and institutional translation needs accounting for historical (Wolf 2015; Schreiber & D’hulst 2017) as well as contemporary ones, theoretical as well as applied approaches (Gonzalez Nuñez & Meylaerts 2017). Historical insight gained by case studies should offer a basis for comparison, and advance the understanding of the embedding contexts and societal impact of translation policies past and present (Lannoy & Van Gucht 2006). It further needs the investigation of policies construed not only in Europe and the Americas but also in the much less studied areas of Asia and Africa, and the generally overlooked eras before the 20th century (Beukes 2007; Baxter 2013).

Secondly, this conference aims at the development of interdisciplinary policies engaging translation studies, legal and institutional studies, and political philosophy. Present-day challenges such as the exponential spread of multilingualism going hand in hand with plural or hybrid forms of citizenship, or the political and societal integration of allophone minorities and immigrants in particular indeed raise new questions. How should one ensure better linguistic integration of minorities in national public spaces and beyond, safeguard equal access to institutions as well as to public and private goods and services, create an inclusive society with due respect for diversity?”

Call for Participants: 2018 Student Research Colloquium

The American Society for Legal History will host a Student Research Colloquium (SRC) on Wednesday, Nov. 7, and Thursday, Nov. 8, 2018, immediately preceding the ASLH’s annual meeting in Houston, Texas. The SRC annually enables eight Ph.D. students and law students to discuss their in-progress dissertations and articles with distinguished ASLH-affiliated scholars. This year, the Department of History at Rice University will host the event.

The SRC’s target audience includes early-post-coursework graduate students and historically minded law students. The colloquium seeks to introduce such students to legal history, to each other, and to the legal-historical scholarly community. Students working in all chronological periods, including ancient and medieval history, and all geographical fields, including non-U.S. history, are encouraged to apply, as are students who have not yet received any formal training in legal history. Applicants who have not had an opportunity to present their work to the ASLH are particularly encouraged to apply. A student may be on the program for the annual meeting and participate in the SRC in the same year.

Each participating student will pre-circulate a twenty-page, double-spaced, footnoted paper to the entire group. The group will discuss these papers at the colloquium, under the guidance of faculty directors. The ASLH will provide at least partial and, in most cases, total reimbursement for travel, hotel, and conference-registration costs.

The application deadline is July 15, 2018. Applicants should submit:
• a cover letter describing, among other things, how far along you are and how many years remain in your course of study;
• a CV;
• a two-page, single-spaced “research statement” that begins with a title and proceeds to describe the in-progress research project that you propose to present at the colloquium; and
• a letter of recommendation from a faculty member, sent separately from, or together with, the other materials.

Organizers will notify all applicants of their decisions by August 15, 2018. Please direct questions and applications to John Wertheimer at: srcproposals@aslh.net.

Call for Submissions: Peter Gonville Stein book prize

The American Society for Legal History announces the Peter Gonville Stein Book Award, to be presented annually for the best book in legal history written in English. This award is designed to recognize and encourage the further growth of fine work in legal history that focuses on all non-US regions, as well as global and international history. To be eligible, a book must sit outside of the field of US legal history and be published during the previous calendar year. Announced at the annual meeting of the ASLH, this honor includes a citation on the contributions of the work to the broader field of legal history. A book may only be considered for the Stein Award, the Reid Award, or the Cromwell Book Prize. It may not be nominated for more than one of these three prizes.

The Stein Award is named in memory of Peter Gonville Stein, BA, LLB (Cantab); PhD (Aberdeen); QC; FBA; Honorary Fellow, ASLH, and eminent scholar of Roman law at the University of Cambridge, and made possible by a generous contribution from an anonymous donor.

For the 2018 prize, the Stein Award Committee will accept nominations of any book (not including textbooks, critical editions, and collections of essays) that bears a copyright date of 2017 as it appears on the printed version of the book. Translations into English may be nominated, provided they are published within two years of the publication date of the original version.

Nominations for the Stein Award (including self-nominations) should be submitted by March 15, 2018. Please send an e-mail to the Committee at steinaward@aslh.net and include: (1) a curriculum vitae of the author (including the author’s e-mail address); and (2) the name, mailing address, e-mail address, and phone number of the contact person at the press who will provide the committee with two copies of the book. This person will be contacted shortly after the deadline. (If a title is short-listed, six further copies will be requested from the publisher.)

Please contact the committee chair, Mitra Sharafi, with any questions: mitra.sharafi@wisc.edu