Over at Conglomerate, Christine Hurt has posted this call for participation in the 4th Annual Junior Scholars Workshop:
Back by popular demand: the Conglomerate Junior Scholars Workshop for untenured law professors or candidates entering the law teaching market this fall. The submission deadline for completed papers is June 30, 2008.
Conglomerate has now hosted this workshop for the past three summers, and we have come to believe that the workshop provides a great service of matching junior authors with more senior experts in their field and also with other readers inside and outside of the academy.
The Fourth Annual Conglomerate Junior Scholars Workshop will be live online around July 28, 2008, with allowance for the schedules of our commentators. We will host one or two papers each week, with the paper and solicited comments posted the morning the paper is showcased. We anticipate hosting no more than five papers to ensure reader participation and attention for the duration of the workshop. Because of this desire to narrow the field somewhat, not every paper will be selected for public posting on the workshop. Criteria for selection will work to create a roster of papers that
* add to the existing literature on that topic
* are at a point of substantial completeness
* from junior academics
* at a wide array of academic institutions
* on topics that fit closely with the interests of the authors and readers of Conglomerate.
Although the umbrella of corporate law covers many topics, we will choose topics that allow us to easily solicit expert commentary and that attract reader comments. We are not deluded enough to believe that being chosen for the workshop has value in and of itself; the value lies in attracting commentary and reader suggestions as part of the workshop. Thus, we see no value in choosing an otherwise excellent and intriguing paper if we cannot use our networks to line up expert commentary. In addition, we feel that the greatest value of the workshop lies in giving feedback and exposure to junior law professors. Therefore, papers chosen will be authored by those junior academics in full-time academic positions, whether visiting assistant professors, fellows, or tenure-track professors. Papers from practitioners will only be chosen in the rare circumstance in which the author is actively pursuing an academic appointment in the upcoming hiring season.
Call for Papers:
If you are finishing up a scholarly article this summer on a topic that may be interesting to Conglomerate’s readers – such as corporate law, securities, contracts, business tax, finance, antitrust or law and economics – we would like to invite you to submit a completed draft to be considered for the workshop. During the workshop, we will link to your paper and provide a forum for you to receive feedback on your paper before you publish it or present it at a conference, workshop or job talk. We may also consider articles accepted for publication if the paper has not reached the final editing stage. We know that many new faculty members do not have the opportunity to present papers at national conferences and find it challenging to get others in their field to read their work. Hopefully, this workshop will facilitate that process.
The mechanics of the workshop are the same as in past years; we will post SSRN links to each paper in the workshop prior to the beginning week. On the specified day, a post will go up for the paper of the day, with an abstract of your paper and some initial comments by invited guest commentator(s). Afterward, you can respond in the comments to the commentator, and readers will post additional comments, creating a cyber discussion of your paper. If you read the blog or know us personally, you know that we strive to be the “if you can’t say something nice” people, but the workshop will not be helpful unless commentators are honest critics. So, we will be supportive of your work, but give constructive criticism as necessary. We will also prohibit anonymous comments in an effort to make sure only serious commenters participate. However, you are advised that your paper will be accessible to the public on SSRN and via links on our blog and that we anticipate having relatively high reader traffic during the workshop.
If any of this sounds good to you, please email me (achurt@illinois.edu) with your information, an abstract of your article, and your completed draft by June 30, 2008. No submission will be accepted on the basis of an abstract without a draft. Likewise, contact me if you have any questions. And most importantly, please pass this invitation to others that may be interested.
Conglomerate is also looking for Commentators, too, so contact Professor Hurt if you are interested.
-Bridget Crawford
