Entirely student-operated and peer-reviewed, Masks is a multi-disciplinary, peer-reviewed online journal based at the University of British Columbia Faculty of Law. The journal’s focus is on the intersections of law and theatre. Diverse scholarship exists on some of these intersections, including: courtroom as theatre; historical connections between theatre and the Inns of Court; lawyer playwrights; images of lawyers in popular culture; law in literature studies of plays; and legislative theatre. Masks seeks to bring together continuing scholarship in these areas and to provide a forum for discussions of new areas of research.

In the first issue the following four articles were published (entire text available on the website):

“Embodied Law: Theatre of the Oppressed in the law school classroom”
- Gillian Calder

“Staging the Virtual Courtroom: An Argument for Standardizing Camera Angles in Canadian Criminal Courts”
- Jeff Locke

“The Theatre of Memory in Northern Ireland”
- Eugene McNamee

““It’s Dramatic”: Metatheatre, legal performance, and broadcasting on Boston Legal”
- Sarah Swan

For the second issue, Masks hopes to expand the range of potential scholarship in this field, and encourages submissions on:
- Legislative theatre and other forms of participatory lawmaking (theory and application)
- Potential and current applications of sociodrama to law
- Use of theatrical tools to elucidate and/or transform power (political, economic, social, etc)
- Theatrical tools in legal pedagogy (beyond role playing)
- Improvisation and the law (including connections between improvisation and negotiation)
- Playback in legal contexts
- Theatre of the Oppressed and social justice
- Studies of legal drama, particularly new dramas exploring developing legal themes

Submissions are solicited from all scholars – not only those working in the fields of Law or Theatre. Scholarship from the areas of sociology, psychology, social work, communication studies, literature, business and other fields which focus on the nexus of law and theatre is highly encouraged. As well, Masks encourages the submission of papers by graduate students (including LL.B. students) and plans to include one student paper per issue. Student papers will be included in the peer review process.

Article Guidelines:

Submissions which advance meaningful scholarship will be evaluated as early as July 2009. A two-step peer review process is conducted by the Editorial Board and external academic referees. Your document is considered anonymously; no weight is given to one’s prior publication, previous submissions or institutional affiliation. Only papers which pass an internal evaluation by the Editorial Board will proceed to external review. The Editorial Board reserves the right to make editorial changes to all contributions as necessary before publication to ensure correctness of spelling, grammar and conformity to style.

Papers should not exceed 20,000 words including footnotes. Footnotes should conform to MLA format. Please send an electronic version (Microsoft Word format), of your typed, double-spaced manuscript for consideration in care of the Editor-in-Chief to maskseditor@gmail.com

Submission Deadline: November 15th, 2009