Organizers:
Professor Sace Elder, Department of History, Eastern Illinois University (seelder [at] eiu.edu)
Professor Timothy Guinnane , Department of Economics, Yale University (timothy.guinnane [at] yale.edu)

These panels are intended to foster an extended conversation on the law across the humanities and social science disciplines. We construe law and legal cultures broadly to mean the creation, administration, or use of law of any type (commercial, property, family, criminal, etc.); normative assumptions, beliefs, and practices regarding justice and the law in society at large and among experts; the effect law and its use has on any aspect of society; the failure of law to fulfill its basic social purposes (for example, under the National Socialist regime); and the use of law to either sustain or overcome any type of social inequality or injustice. We also construe law and legal cultures to encompass the use of legal sources for the study of some non-legal topic, for example, the conduct of trials for the study of a particular discourse.

All periods of German and Central European history are welcome, as are papers in English or German. We encourage submission of individual papers as well as entire panels; while the GSA prefers complete panels, we hope to combine papers sent to us into complete panels and send them along to the GSA organizers.

Please submit a 150-200 word abstract and a brief CV by January 20, 2011 to the network’s email address: gsa.law.culture@gmail.com. Interested presenters are encouraged to contact the organizers with any questions.