Law, Literature and Philosophy

Beyond Reasonable Doubt‚: Conversations in Law, Literature and Philosophy from the Reformation to the Present Day
7th - 9th September 2007
Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
Convenors: Yota Batsaki, Subha Mukherji, Jan-Melissa Schramm

This conference aims to bring scholars of literature, law and philosophy into interdisciplinary conversation. In the course of the last three decades, legal practitioners, literary critics, jurists and philosophers have found in this dialogue an enriched vocabulary for the exploration of their own particular interests. Ambitious and visionary research has been undertaken which has advanced our understanding of topics as disparate as the history of the novel, censorship, blasphemy, plagiarism, hermeneutic theory, and the rhetorical manipulation of narrative within the courtroom.

We are inviting papers on any aspect of the intersection of these discourses, including papers that might address some of the following topics:

- evidence, interpretation, judgment

- the role of doubt and scepticism in critical enquiry

- casuistry, rhetoric, persuasion, ethics

- legal and poetic fictions

- equity

- the role of narrative jurisprudence

- testimony, confession, autobiography

- contract, agency and intentionality

- methodological issues: the value of interdisciplinarity

- censorship, blasphemy, plagiarism and intellectual property

- gender, sexuality, law and ethics

- human, divine and natural law

Recent events in European political and public life have given these sub-themes an enhanced profile which demands further interdisciplinary investigation. ŒBeyond Reasonable Doubt‚ seeks to bring together representatives and practitioners from each of the three disciplines to probe and interrogate such questions as the relationship of text, image and action, and the epistemological and ontological foundations of knowledge and judgment.

Plenary speakers currently include John Bender, Peter Brooks, Leo Damrosch, Kathy Eden, Lorna Hutson, Ian Ward and Luke Wilson.

Call for Papers: Abstracts of no more than 500 words are invited, to be submitted no later than 1 February 2007. Please email abstracts to one of the following:

Yota Batsaki: pb324@cam.ac.uk

Subha Mukherji: sm10014@cam.ac.uk

Jan-Melissa Schramm: js10032@cam.ac.uk