Invitation and Call for Papers: Feminist Legal Theory Collaborative Research Network, January 2012

The Feminist Legal Theory Collaborative Research Network is a newly-constituted group that seeks to bring together scholars across a range of fields who are interested in feminist legal theory. At our inaugural get-together at the Law and Society Association meeting this past June, we decided to hold two get-togethers in the coming year: the first in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with the AALS annual meeting in January 2012; the next in Hawaii, in conjunction with the Law and Society Association annual meeting in June 2012. The first of these gatherings will take place on Wednesday, January 4, 2012, the day before the AALS annual meeting begins, at George Washington University Law School. As with our earlier get-together, the conference will provide an opportunity for us to share scholarship, talk about our field more abstractly, and also get to know one another. If you are interested in attending, we invite you to register, as well as to respond to our call for papers at the end of this invitation.

The FLT-CRN Conference will begin at 9 a.m. on January 4, 2012, and will conclude that  day with dinner at a local restaurant. G.W. has generously offered us space for the meeting at no charge, and is even providing us lunch. Because of this, there will be no registration fee for the conference. Paying for dinner, as well as hotel and transportation, will be the individual responsibility of attendees.

Conference sessions

The conference will consist of the following sessions:

• Welcome plenary. The committee will give a brief overview of the conference, followed by an opportunity for participants to introduce themselves and briefly summarize their current scholarly projects, teaching challenges, etc. This should give everyone an opportunity to identify areas of mutual interest that can be discussed further over the course of the day.

• Panel sessions. These sessions will be similar to the panels at the LSA conference this past June. At each of these sessions, there will likely be three panelists speaking on papers that center on a common theme, and each paper will have an individual commentator.

• Works-in-progress sessions. These will be small breakout sessions designed to foster intensive discussion of each work-in-progress. The size of each workshop will depend on the number of works-in-progress submitted. Each paper will have a commentator, who will assume that all attendees will have read the paper in advance and will proceed immediately to discussion. All conference participants will be assigned to attend specific workshops, so as to balance attendance among the various workshops. If more papers are submitted than time allows to be discussed, the planning committee will select the papers that will be presented based on subject matter, methodology, etc.

• Closing plenary. This plenary will provide everyone with an opportunity to comment on their conference experience and offer suggestions for future FLT-CRN meetings.

Registering for the Conference

You can register for the conference by clicking the “Registration” tab of the “2012 Washington, D.C. Meeting” page on the Feminist Legal Theory TWEN page (directions to sign up for the TWEN page are below).  The registration deadline is Wednesday, November 23, 2011. When you register, you will also have the opportunity to volunteer to comment on a paper; please consider doing so. Especially if you are willing to comment, early registration will help us plan and is appreciated!

 Call for Papers

There is no pre-set theme to which paper submissions must conform, other than that they relate to legal feminism in some shape or form. Instead, our goal is to stimulate focused discussion on papers on which scholars are currently working. A committee of the CRN will assign individual papers to panel sessions based on subject, or to work-in-progress sessions, and will assign commentators to comment on each individual paper.

If you’re interested in presenting an unpublished paper or a work-in-progress, please post your name, paper title, and an abstract of 400-500 words under the “Paper Proposals” tab of the “2012 Washington, D.C. Meeting” page on the Feminist Legal Theory TWEN page (directions to sign up for the TWEN page are below). Please include a description of how far along you expect the paper to be in January. Paper proposals should be posted by Friday September 23, 2011, in order to give us time to sort paper proposals into panels. We will try to accommodate as many proposals as possible and will notify everyone who submits a paper of the schedule by mid-October. Papers that are accepted either for panels or for work-in-progress sessions will be due on December 12, 2011.

Signing up on the TWEN page

 If you haven’t yet registered for the TWEN page, signing up is easy. Just sign onto Westlaw, hit the tab on the top for “TWEN,” then click “Add Course,” and choose the “Feminist Legal Theory” CRN from the drop-down list of National TWEN Courses. Or, if you have a Westlaw OnePass as a faculty member, you can enter the Easy Course Access link below:

Easy Course Access Link: http://lawschool.westlaw.com/shared/courselink.asp?course=113601&lID=4%3D2

If you aren’t enrolled on the TWEN page and you don’t have a Westlaw password, please email Max Eichner at meichner-at-unc-dot-edu and she’ll enroll you directly.

Hotel

A limited number of rooms at the two conference hotels for the AALS meeting, the Marriott Wardman Park and the Washington Hilton, are available earlier in the week at the AALS group rate. Therefore FLT-CRN participants who plan to stay at these hotels should reserve rooms early. Lodging information on the AALS Annual 2012 Meeting is available here. You must register for the AALS meeting to obtain the AALS rate.

Questions

If you have questions about any of the local arrangements in Washington, D.C., please contact Eleanor Brown (embrown-at-law-dot-gwu-dot-edu) or Naomi Cahn (ncahn-at-law-dot-gwu-dot-edu). If you have questions regarding the works-in-progress or panel sessions, please contact Jennifer Hendricks (jsh-at-tennessee-dot-edu). If you have any other general questions, please feel free to contact any of us on the planning committee.

We are very excited about this conference. We look forward to hearing from you and hope to see you in D.C. in January. In addition, we know that there are still a number of people who should be on our list of interested folks, but who haven’t made it on. So please forward this email to others you think may be interested.

— The FLT-CRN January 2012 Planning Committee: Eleanor Brown, Naomi Cahn, Maxine Eichner, Jennifer Hendricks, Clare Huntington, Alicia Kelly, Suzanne Kim, Daniela Kraiem