Fall 2007
October
11, 2007:
Workshop
on South Asian Legal Studies ("Categories of Legal
Identity") to coincide with the South Asia Conference
held annually at UW-Madison, hosted by Professors Mitra
Sharafi and Marc Galanter of the UW Law School (details
pending). For more information, please go to http://southasiaconference.wisc.edu/preconf_2.html
Spring 2008
Speakers
Abstract: The prevailing modern vision of law as secular, instrumental, and positive is a chimera produced in and by European and American nation-states and their courts over the last two centuries. The broader history of law in other times and places reveals notions and practices of law that challenge accepted 'truths' about law's reach and role in human life. In this presentation, a case is made that law everywhere may be profitably seen as the theology of ordinary life. At every level, the laws by which we lead our lives encode assumptions and ideas about what we aspire to as human beings and what we presume about ourselves and others, especially aspects of things near to us such as family, birth, death, sex, money, marriage, and work. Texts of the Hindu law tradition provide the inspiration and the evidence for the presentation, and the lessons learned from Hindu legal texts will serve to begin a new kind of conversation about law and the humanities.
April 18, 2008: "Muslim Women and Divorce in India: Some Practical Implications of Legal Pluralism in the Sphere of Family Law, " by Professor Sylvia Vatuk, Professor Emerita, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Chicago, Lecture in the series Role of Law in Developing and Transitional Societies, 2:00-3:00pm, Lubar Commons (7200 Law), sponsored by the Global Legal Studies Center and co-sponsored by the Center for South Asia and the South Asia Legal Studies Working Group. QUestions? Contact Sumudu Atapattu (saatapattu@wisc.edu)
