2020 Reading Group

We are holding the IILAH Reading Group by Zoom for the remainder of this year. If you would like to join online, please RSVP to Connor Foley at connor.foley@unimelb.edu.au

The IILAH Reading Group will recommence for Semester 2, 2020 on Wednesday 29 July from 12:00 pm (meeting fortnightly).

Examinations in the Great Hall at Sydney University, 1927


Semester 2, 2020

The University

The theme for semester 2 is 'the University'. The reading group will examine texts concerned with the past, present and future of the university. In reading these texts, the reading group aims to explore the purpose, politics, and economics of the university at a time of crisis for public institutions and for the world.

  • Wednesday
    29 July 2020

    • Session I

      Raimond Gaita, 'To Civilise the City?’ Meanjin Quarterly (2012) 71(1).

      Glyn Davis, 'The Australian Idea of a University’ The Conversation online (2013).

  • Wednesday
    12 August 2020

    • Session II

      Stefan Collini, 'The Marketisation Doctrine’ London Review of Books (2018) 40(9).

  • Wednesday
    26 August 2020

    • Session III

      Raewyn Connell (2017) 'Southern theory and world universities', Higher Education Research & Development (2017) 36(1).

  • Wednesday
    9 September 2020

    • Session IV

      William Jamal Richardson, 'Understanding Eurocentrism as a Structural Problem of Undone Science’ in Bhambra et al (eds) Decolonising the University (Pluto Press, 2018) 231-248.

  • Wednesday
    23 September 2020

    • Session V

      Jacques Derrida, ‘The future of the profession or the university without condition (thanks to the ‘Humanities’ what could take place tomorrow) in Tom Cohen (ed) Jacques Derrida and the Humanities: A Critical Reader (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 24-57.

  • Wednesday
    7 October 2020

    • Sesion VI

      Sara Ahmed, 'Use and the University’ in What’s The Use: On the Uses of Use (Duke University Press, 2019), 141-196.

  • Wednesday
    21 October 2020

    • Session VII

      Margaret Thornton, ‘Research in the corporatised university’ in Privatising the Public University: The Case of Law (Routledge, 2011), 165-205.

  • Wednesday
    4 November 2020

    • Session VIII

      Jake Goldenfein et al, 'Private Companies and Scholarly Infrastructure - Google Scholar and Academic Autonomy', SSRN (2019).

  • Wednesday
    18 November 2020

    • Session IX

      John Borrows, 'Heroes, Tricksters, Monsters, and Caretakers: Indigenous Law and Legal Education', McGill Law Journal (2016) 61(4).

The 1939 World's Fair, New York - the audience looks down at General Motor's Futurama exhibition


Semester 1, 2020

World-Making: Technologies/Histories/Laws

This semester’s reading group examines texts concerned with the world-making potential of technology and law. In reading these texts, the reading group aims to explore both the role of law in the creation and maintenance of socio-technical imaginaries, and the role of technologies in creating and maintaining legal orders.

  • Wednesday
    4 March 2020

    • Socio-Technical Imaginaries

      Sheila Jasanoff, ‘Future Imperfect: Science, Technology, and the Imaginations of Modernity’ in Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim, Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power (University of Chicago Press, 2015).

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Wednesday
    18 March 2020

    • Imagining Outer Space

      Matt Craven, ‘“Other Spaces”: Constructing the Legal Architecture of a Cold War Commons and the Scientific-Technical Imaginary of Outer Space’ (2019) 30(2) European Journal of International Law 547

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Wednesday
    1 April 2020

    • Imagining the Sea (I)

      Renisa Mawani, 'Introduction', (partial) Across Oceans of Law: The Komagata Maru and Jurisdiction in the Time of Empire (Duke University Press, 2018).

      Renisa Mawani, ‘The Free Sea: A Juridical Space' in Renisa Mawani, Across Oceans of Law: The Komagata Maru and Jurisdiction in the Time of Empire (Duke University Press, 2018).

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Wednesday
    15 April 2020

    • Imagining the Sea (II)

      Fahad Bishara, ‘A Geography of Obligation’ in Fahad Bishara, A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), 24-57.

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Wednesday
    29 April 2020
    2:30 pm start time

    • Crossing the Sea

      Eugene TeSelle, 'Looking for Home: Travel a metaphor in Augustine’ (1996) 14 Annali d‘Italianistica 103-120.

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Wednesday
    13 May 2020

    • Materialities/Files (I)

      Bruno Latour, ‘How to make a file ripe for use’ in Bruno Latour, The Making of Law: an ethnography of the Conseil d’Etat (Polity Press, 2010).

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Wednesday
    27 May 2020

    • Materialities/Files (II)

      Alain Pottage, ‘The Materiality of What?’ (2012) 39(1) Journal of Law and Society 167.

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Wednesday
    10 June 2020

    • Digital Materialities (I)

      Cornelia Vismann, ‘From the Bureau to Data Protection’ and ‘Files into Icons’, in Cornelia Vismann, Files: Law and Media Technology, 123-164.

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Wednesday
    24 June 2020

    • Digital Materialities (II)

      Julie Cohen, ‘The Future(s) of Fundamental Rights’ in Julie Cohen, Between Truth and Power: The Legal Constructions of Informational Capitalism (2019, Oxford University Press), 238-268.

      Room 831, Level 8