. Law and literature, and the visual
Martin A. Kayman, Cardiff University, U.K.

Law and literature emerged in the 1970s as a key element in the textual turn through which theory gained its political purchase on culture. Since then the exploration of the various relations between each of its constituents has concerned itself principally with issues of writing and reading: the text of the law and the law of the text, if you will. The mutually-defining symmetries of law and literature are, however, disrupted by the visual, which has been making its return in both discourses. On the one hand, legal theory has raised relations between the image and the law as a source for a critique of laws foundations in textual reason. On the other hand, at the same time as literary studies have expanded to embrace visual artefacts, poststructuralism has drawn critical attention to the dominance of cultural analysis by linguistic models based on verbal signification. How, then, do the visual turns turn back not only on each, but on the potent pairing of law and literature? The aim of this panel is, then, to bring the three together: not just the law and the visual; or literature and the visual; but law and literature, and the visual.

If you are interested in participating, please send a 300-word abstract of your proposed paper, together with a brief CV to Martin Kayman (KaymanM@cardiff.ac.uk) by 15 September 2010.
Information about the conference and the call for papers are posted at: http://conferences.enl.uoa.gr/HASE8/