2019 Reading Group


Our theme this semester is Models of Interdisciplinarity in Law and the Humanities. All students, faculty and visitors are welcome to join. Readings will be posted below in advance.


'Ramblas No 2' by Oswaldo Guayasamin (1989)

Semester 2, 2019

Models of Interdisciplinarity in Law and the Humanities

This semester’s reading group considers texts that exemplify a scholarly practice of approaching law from different humanities disciplines. In examining these models, the reading group continues to address the question of what is distinctive, and critical, about studying law from within the humanities, while continuing to question the category of “the humanities”.

  • Wednesday
    31 July 2019

    • Law Unlimited

      Margaret Davies, “Preface”, “Chapter 1” and “Chapter 2”, Law Unlimited: Materialism, Pluralism, and Legal Theory (Routledge, 2016): 1-40 [40pp]

      also recommended: Margaret Davies, “Chapter 5”, Law Unlimited:Materialism, Pluralism, and Legal Theory (Routledge, 2016): 74-89 [15pp]

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Wednesday
    14 August 2019

    • Law / Literature

      Joseph Slaughter, “Pathetic Fallacies: Personification and the Unruly Subjects of International Law”, London Review of International Law, vol 7, no 1 (2019): 3-54 [50pp]

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Wednesday
    28 August 2019

    • Law / Accounting

      David Chioni Moore, “Accounting on Trial: The Critical Legal Studies Movement and its Lessons for Radical Accounting”, Accounting, Organizations & Society, vol 16, no 8 (1991): 763-791 [28pp]

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Wednesday
    11 September 2019

    • Law / Visual Art

      Desmond Manderson, “Chapter 6”, Danse Macabre: Temporalities of Law in the Visual Arts (CUP, 2019): 157-194 [30pp]

      also recommended: Desmond Manderson, “Foreword”, Danse Macabre: Temporalities of Law in the Visual Arts (CUP, 2019): 1-19 [15pp]

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Wednesday
    25 September 2019

  • Wednesday
    9 October 2019

    • Law / Legends

      Christine Black, “Part I”, “Part II” and “Part V”, A Mosaic of Indigenous Legal Thought: Legendary Tales and Other Writings (Routledge, 2017): 3-54 and 175-178 [50pp]

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Wednesday
    23 October 2019

    • Law / Music

      Christopher Michael Brown, “‘Every Tone Was a Testimony’: Black Music, Literature and Law”, Law, Culture and the Humanities, vol 12, no 1 (2016): 39-48 [9pp]

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Wednesday
    6 November 2019

    • Law / History

      Natasha Wheatley, “Spectral Legal Personality in Interwar International Law: On New Ways of Not Being a State”, Law and History Review, vol 35, no 3 (2017): 753-787 [34pp]

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Wednesday
    20 November 2019

    • Law / Performance

      Catherine M Cole, "Statements Before and After Arrests: Performing at Law's Edge in Apartheid South Africa", in Austin Sarat et al (eds), Law and Performance (University of Massachusetts Press, 2018): 122-155 [30pp]

      Room 831, Level 8

Semester 1, 2019

Histories of Interdisciplinarity in Law and the Humanities

This semester’s reading group examines different histories of interdisciplinarity in the humanities and social sciences, written from different positions in the Global South and North. In reading these histories, the reading group aims to address the question of what is distinctive, and critical, about studying law from within “the humanities”.

  • Wednesday
    06 March 2019

    • Law and the Social Sciences into the 20th Century (in the USA)

      Christopher Tomlins, “Framing the Field of Law’s Interdisciplinary Encounters: A Historical Narrative”, Law and Society Review, vol 34, no 4 (2000): 911-967 [56pp]

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Tuesday
    19 March 2019

    • Law and the Humanities into the 21st Century (mostly in the USA)

      Austin Sarat, Matthew Anderson and Cathrine O Frank, “Introduction: On the Origins and Prospects of the Humanistic Study of Law”, in Sarat, Anderson and Frank (eds), Law and the Humanities: An Introduction (CUP, 2010): 1-18 [18pp]

      Catherine L Fisk and Robert W Gordon, “Foreword: ‘Law As...’ Theory and Method in Legal History”, UC Irvine Law Review, vol 1, no 3 (2011): 519-527 [8pp]

      Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, “Introduction: The And of Law and Theory”, Routledge Handbook of Law and Theory (Routledge, 2018): 1-6 [6pp]

      Room 722, Level 7

  • Wednesday
    03 April 2019

    • The End of Interdisciplinarity? (still in the USA)

      Julie Stone Peters, “Law, Literature, and the Vanishing Real: On the Future of an Interdisciplinary Illusion”, PMLA, vol 120, no 2 (2005): 442-451 [10pp]

      Bernadette Meyler, “Law, Literature, and History: The Love Triangle”, UC Irvine Law Review, vol 5 (2015): 365-390 [26pp]

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Wednesday
    17 April 2019

    • Opening up the Histories (from the USA to the UK and Germany)

      Greta Olson, “De-Americanizing Law and Literature Narratives: Opening Up the Story”, Law and Literature, vol 22,
      no 2 (2010): 338-364 [24pp]

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Wednesday
    01 May 2019

    • Research Notes with Vanessa Ogle

      In this session, Vanessa Ogle (author of The Global Transformation of Time) will speak informally about her research methods
      and practices, including the archival work for her latest project on ‘archipelago capitalism’.

      Vanessa Ogle, “Archipelago Capitalism: Tax Havens, Offshore Money, and the State, 1950s-1970s,” American Historical Review 122, no. 5 (December 2017):  1431-1458.

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Wednesday
    15 May 2019

    • Decolonial Law and Literature (in Colonial Peru)

      Rolena Adorno, “Introduction” and “Chronicles of Conquest”, in Guaman Poma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru (University of Texas Press, 1986): 1-35 [35pp]

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Wednesday
    29 May 2019

    • Anticolonial Law and Literature (in the Black Atlantic)

      Anne W Gulick, “Introduction” and “Declaring Negritude: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Aimé Césaire’s Cahier”, in Literature, Law, and Rhetorical Performance in the Anticolonial Atlantic (Ohio State University Press, 2016): 1-12 and 77-120 [55pp]

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Wednesday 12 June 2019

    • Working through the Field (Internationally)

      Peter D Rush and Maria Elander, “Working through the Cinematography of International Criminal Justice: Procedures of Law and Images of Atrocity”, London Review of International Law, vol 6, no 1 (2018): 17-43 [26pp]

      Room 831, Level 8

  • Wednesday
    26 June 2019

    • A Humanities of Resistance (in the Global North?)

      Costas Douzinas, “A Humanities of Resistance: Fragments for a Legal History of Humanity”, in Sarat et al (eds), Law and the Humanities: An Introduction (CUP, 2010): 49-72 [23pp]

      Room 831, Level 8

Participating in the IILAH Reading Groups


If you would like to introduce a reading to the group, please contact IILAH Director, Professor Sundhya Pahuja at s.pahuja@unimelb.edu.au. If you would like to come, please RSVP to connor.foley@unimelb.edu.au.