Tenth Anniversary Conference on Law and Memory held Feb. 25-26 at USC Law
- By Michelle Salzman
In honor of 10 years of scholarship, USC’s Center for Law, History and Culture will host a special “Tenth Anniversary Conference on Law and Memory” Feb. 25-26 at the USC Gould School of Law to examine how law and memory intertwine to record the past.
The conference will include a series of panel discussions featuring experts who will analyze law and memory in the context of war, legal trials, slavery, property and trauma.
Since 2001, the Center for Law, History and Culture, based at USC College and the USC Gould School of Law, has worked to cultivate the interdisciplinary fields of law and the humanities. The center has stood at the cusp of a relatively new academic discipline that studies law as a historical and cultural institution.
“Instead of just having a purely technical discussion or crunching policy analysis, what we’re really getting at is the ‘felt experience’ of law,” explained USC Gould professor Nomi Stolzenberg, who co-directs the center with law and history professor Ariela Gross and Hilary Schor, USC College professor of English, comparative literature, gender studies and law.
Through seminars, conferences and junior scholars programs, the center explores the law's position at the nexus of society from a variety of theoretical perspectives, including history, literature, philosophy, political science, gender studies, economics and legal theory.
“In a field that is changing as rapidly as law and humanities,” Schor said, “how better to mark the present than by measuring our changing relationship to the past - even our own?”
Robert Gordon, a legal historian from Yale Law School, will present a lecture calling for judges and scholars to abandon originalism as a theory to interpret the U.S. Constitution.
Other speakers include Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur Fellow Annette Gordon-Reed of Harvard University; Marita Sturken of New York University; Paul Saint-Amour of the University of Pennsylvania; Elaine Scarry of Harvard University; and Cheryl Harris of UCLA School of Law.
The “Tenth Anniversary Conference on Law and Memory” will take place Feb. 25 from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Feb. 26 from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The event is open to the public. Registration is $10 for the general public and $5 for students, and includes continental breakfast and lunch.
To register, contact Julie Davis at [email protected] or (213) 821-1239.
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