Morris L. Cohen Student Essay Competition

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The Legal History and Rare Books Section (LH&RB) of the American Association of Law Libraries, in cooperation with Cengage Learning, announces the third annual Morris L. Cohen Student Essay Competition.

The competition is named in honor of Morris L. Cohen, late Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale Law School. Professor Cohen was a leading scholar in the fields of legal research, rare books, and historical bibliography.

The purpose of the competition is to encourage scholarship in the areas of legal history, rare law books, and legal archives, and to acquaint students with the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and law librarianship.

Eligibility

Students currently enrolled in accredited graduate programs in library science, law, history, or related fields are eligible to enter the competition. Both full- and part-time students are eligible. Membership in AALL is not required.

Requirements

Essays may be on any topic related to legal history, rare law books, or legal archives. The entry form and instructions are available at the LH&RB website: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/lhrb/

Entries must be submitted by 11:59 p.m., March 15, 2011. The winner will be announced by April 15.

Awards

The winner will receive a $500.00 prize from Cengage Learning and up to $1,000 for expenses associated with attendance at the AALL Annual Meeting.

The runner-up will have the opportunity to publish the second-place essay in LH&RB’s online scholarly journal Unbound: An Annual Review of Legal History and Rare Books.

Please direct questions to Robert Mead at libram@nmcourts.gov or Sarah Yates at yates006@tc.umn.edu.

Third Annual U.S. Intellectual History Conference

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A notice from Andrew Hartman, organizer of the Third Annual U.S. Intellectual History Conference. The schedule looks tremendous. Well worth a visit to the Big Apple.

The Third Annual U.S. Intellectual History Conference be held on October 21-22, 2010 in New York City. The Conference is being organized by the editors of the U.S. Intellectual History (USIH) blog in coordination with the City University of New York's Center for the Humanities (The Graduate Center). This year’s theme is “Intellectuals and Their Publics.”

Beyond dozens of exciting and relevant sessions, I would especially like to call attention to our keynote speaker and our two evening plenary sessions.

The keynote will be given by Harvard University Professor James Kloppenberg on Friday (Oct. 22) afternoon. Kloppenberg will be presenting from his book, "Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition," forthcoming from Princeton University Press.

The first plenary session, on Thursday (Oct. 21) evening, is on "Renewing Black Intellectual History," featuring Adolph Reed, Jr., Kenneth Warren, Dean Robinson, and Touré Reed. Based on an anthology of same title, this plenary seeks to map the changing conditions of black political practice and experience from Emancipation to Obama.

The second plenary session, on Friday (Oct. 22) evening, is titled, "Intellectual History for What?" It includes George Cotkin, Rochelle Gurstein, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Wilfred McClay, David Steigerwald, and Casey Nelson Blake, who will raise a number of questions involving the relationship between intellectual history and less specialized audiences and genres of expression, including: intellectual history and social/cultural criticism; intellectual history as a resource for moral reflection and edification; writing for, teaching, and speaking to generalist audiences; and the ambiguous position of intellectual history within the research university.

Other notable participants include, in no particular order: Jackson Lears, Jennifer Burns, Kim Phillips-Fein, James Livingston, Bruce Kuklick, Leo Ribuffo, Robert Westbrook, Joan Shelly Rubin, Andrew Jewett, Jonathan Scott Holloway, Martin Burke, Eugene McCarraher, Daniel Borus, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, J. David Hoeveler, Jennifer Delton, Philip Gorski, Nancy Sinkoff, Neil Jumonville, and Jeffrey Perry.

Program and registration information.

CIC/Gilder Lehrman American History Seminar

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, CIC, and the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) will cosponsor the eighth annual seminar on American history to be held at Yale University, June 13-16, 2010. The seminar is open to all full time faculty members in history, English, and related fields at CIC and UNCF institutions. David W. Blight, Class of 1954 Professor of American History at Yale University will lead the seminar on “Slave Narratives.” Slave narratives that have recently come to light are rich sources for the teaching of history, literature, and related fields. The seminar will focus on a number of these texts.

Funder: The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

Program Status: Nominations for the 2010 seminar are due Monday, March 15, 2010. The seminar will be held at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. To apply, refer to the materials below.