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:: CURRENT NEWS AND GUIDE TO NEW CONTENTS ::
Society announces the competition for the Preyer Scholars for 2013. Open to junior scholars, including graduate students, the winners get their way paid to the Society’s annual meeting in November to present their papers at a special panel. The deadline for applications is June 30, 2013. For further information click here.
Applications are now being accepted for Cromwell Fellowships to be awarded in 2013.The Cromwell Foundation will award up to five fellowships of up to $5,000 for scholars in the early stages of their careers, including graduate students, pursuing projects in legal history. For further information click here.
Society announces competitions for the 2013 prizes and awards.The relevant committees and subcommittees have announced the competitions for the Cromwell Book Prize, the Cromwell Article Prize, the Cromwell Dissertation Prize, the Reid Book Award, and the Paul L. Murphy Award. For information click on the name of the prize/award.
The ASLH annual meeting, 8–11 November, in St. Louis was a smashing success. A brief chronicle of the meeting appears below together with important announcements concerning next year's meeting, the Hurst Summer Institute, and the Society's publications. Your webmaster’s illustrated and somewhat irreverent chronicle of the meeting may be found here. The serious business of the board is reported here. Abstracts of virtually all the papers given at the conference may be found here.
Erwin Surrency, R.I.P. We were saddened to learn that Erwin Surrency, a founding member of the Society and for many years the editor of its publication the American Journal of Legal History, died at the age of 88 on the very first day of the annual meeting . A moving obituary, which outlines his many accomplishments, may be found here.
Five new members elected to the Board of Directors and two new members to the Nominating Committee. The president announced at the meeting that Margot Canaday of Princeton University, Reuel Schiller of the University of California (Hastings), Mitra Sharafi of the University of Wisconsin, David Tanenhaus of the University of Nevada (Las Vegas), and Karen Tani of the University of California (Berkeley) were elected to the Board of Directors. Ariela Gross of the University of Southern California and Michael Willrich of Brandeis University were elected to the Nominating Committee. A complete list of the officers and directors of the Society and the beginnings of the committee assignments for 2013 may be found here.
Beattie, Kerber, and Kercher named honorary fellows of the Society. The president announced at the meeting that John Beattie of the University of Toronto, Linda Kerber of the University of Iowa, and Bruce Kercher of Macquarie University have been elected Honorary Fellows of the Society. Jim Phillips of the University of Toronto read the citation of the Committee on Honors for Beattie; Constance Backhouse of the University of Ottawa, the citation for Kerber; and Chris Tomlins of the University of California, Irvine, the citation for Kercher. For links to the citations, click here.
Honors Committee seeks nominations for honorary fellows of the Society. For details on how to nominate click here. For details on the Society's honors categories, click here.
Awards, prizes, and fellowships galore. The president announced at the meeting that: Rebecca Scott (University of Michigan) had been awarded the Surrency Prize; James Oldham (Georgetown University), the Sutherland Prize; Daniel J. Sharfstein (Vanderbilt University), the Cromwell Book Prize; Laura M. Weinrib (Princeton University), the Cromwell Dissertation Prize; David Freeman Engstrom (Stanford University), the Cromwell Article Prize; and Tomiko Brown-Nagin (Harvard University), the Reid Book Award. Sam Lebovic (Rutgers University) received a Paul L. Murphy Award. Cromwell Fellowships were awarded to: James Allison (University of Virginia), Anne Fleming (University of Pennsylvania), Hidetaka Hirota (Boston College), Ryan Johnson (University of Minnesota), and Suzanne Kahn (Columbia University). Sarah Levine-Gronnigsatar (University of Chicago) and Taisu Zhang (Yale University) were designated Preyer Scholars. Chris Waldrep received the Craig Joyce Medal.
Next year South Florida, 7–10 November. For the first time in its history, the Society will be hosting its annual meeting in South Florida. The conference hotel is the Hyatt Regency Miami. Most of the events will be physically in Miami, but we will repair to Fort Lauderdale for the plenary and the reception, where we will be the guests of Nova Southestern University Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences. Cristina Duffy Ponsa and Karl Shoemaker co-chair the Program Committee. They have already issued a call for papers, which may be viewed and/or downloaded here. For more information about the South Florida conference check out the conferences page. The conference page will be periodically updated as more information comes in.Applications for the seventh Hurst Summer Institute (9–22 June, 2013) close on January 15, 2013. Honoring the late Willard Hurst, who was the dean of American legal historians, the Society, in conjunction with the Institute for Legal Studies at the University of Wisconsin Law School, sponsors a biennial summer Institute for younger legal historians at the Madison campus of the University of Wisconsin. Dirk Hartog (Princeton University) will lead this summer’s Institute. The application period is December 1, 2012 through January 15, 2013. Information concerning applications may be found here.
New editorial team for the Law and History Review. Elizabeth Dale of the University of Florida has become Editor-in Chief of the Law and History Review. She succeeds David Tanenhaus of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, who has been editor for eight very successful years. Felice Batlan of IIT Chicago-Kent has become Associate Editor (Book Reviews Americas) and Will Hanley has become Associate Editor (Book Reviews non-Americas). They replace, respectively, Daniel Hamilton of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Amalia Kessler of Stanford University, who have had equally successful terms.
For information about the Society's book series, Studies in Legal History, published by the Cambridge University Press, visit the elegant website that the editors of the series have recently put together.
Renew your ASLH membership with Cambridge University Press. For the details click
here.