Cfp: "Law, Literature and Religion," School of Law and Department of English, Villanova University, October 1-3, 2009.

First Annual Law and Literature Symposium. We invite interested scholars to submit abstracts of proposed papers. Peter Goodrich (Professor of Law and Director of Law and Humanities, Cardozo School of Law), Steven Mailloux (Professor of English and Chancellor’s Professor of Rhetoric, Department of English, University of California – Irvine), and Robin West (Associate Dean, Research and Academic Programs, and Frederick J. Haas Professor of Law and Philosophy, Georgetown University Law Center), will be keynote speakers. The conference theme for 2009, “Law, Literature, and Religion”, is broadly conceived. Papers may include but are not limited to papers on any literary, rhetorical, narrative, or textual aspects of law and religion; the exegesis and hermeneutics of legal texts or topics; interpretation in law, literature, and religion; shared languages and histories of law and religion; discursive intersections of civil and canon law; ethics and justice explored in religious and secular literature; the comparative poetics or rhetoric of legality and religion; legal priesthoods; political theology; orthodoxies and/or heterodoxies; humanisms; Pauline studies; religious images in law; literary works about religion in/and/as law; and law as a civil religion. Papers will be 20-25 minutes long to permit time for discussion. Abstracts of proposed papers should be sent to Professor Penelope Pether (pether@law.villanova.edu), to whom inquires may also be addressed. Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words, and should arrive before March 15, 2009. Invitees will be notified by April 30, 2009, and will receive room and board at (but not transportation to and from) the symposium, provided by Villanova University School of Law.