Elliott Visconsi

Elliott is working on a new project,  tentatively titled “Citizenship Before Rights: Shakespearean Belonging.” This is a study of the early modern  literary mediation of political belonging in the years before the age of revolutions, which promulgate  sweeping and modern dignitary rights of citizenship. Focusing on the plays of Shakespeare, this study tracks structuring concepts include asylum and refugeeism, denizenship, superfluity and statelessness (including slavery), “household” dependency relations, and the moral hazards attached to religious pluralism.

Of late he is especially interested in exploring new digital technologies as they allow humanities scholars to reach a broader audience.

In case you’re interested:

http://twitter.com/#!/EVisconsi

Here  is the full program:

Friday, 07 January

257. Law and Culture in the Age of Revolutions
12:00 noon-1:15 p.m., Diamond Salon 8, J. W. Marriott.

Presiding: Molly Farrell, Ohio State Univ.
1. “Blackstone’s (Anti)Revolutionary Gothic,” Kathryn D. Temple,
Georgetown Univ.
2. “Legal Speculation: The Vesey Conspiracy and Revolutionary
Failure,” Carrie Hyde, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick
3. “Law and the Waning of Authorial Anonymity,” Robert J. Griffin,
Texas A&M Univ., College Station

Saturday, 08 January
553. Regulating Culture: Constitutional Rights and Norms

1:45-3:00 p.m., 404B, LA Convention Center. Program arranged by the Discussion Group on Law as Literature and the Division on Twentieth-Century American Literature

Presiding: Caleb Smith, Yale Univ.
1. “Bad Tendencies: American Modernism and the First Amendment,”
Peter Mallios, Univ. of Maryland, College Park
2. “Supreme Court Jurisprudence, Fictional Jurisgenesis ,” Margaret
Hunt Gram, Harvard Univ.
3. “Novels for Hire: A Regulatory Approach to the Growing Problem of
Hybrid Speech,” Zahr Said Stauffer, Univ. of Virginia Law School

Sunday, 09 January
699. Constitutional Culture and Literary History
8:30-9:45 a.m., 402A, LA Convention Center

Presiding: Elliott Visconsi, U of Notre Dame
1. “Measure for Measure and the Institution of the Common Law,”
Bernadette Meyler, Cornell Univ.
2. “The English Novel, Human Rights, and Habeas Corpus Jurisprudence,
1789-1820,” Sarah E. Winter, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs
3. “Weimar 1919: Walter Benjamin’s Constitutional Criticism,”
Thomas Oliver Beebee, Penn State Univ., University Park
4. “Reading Veils,” Peter Brooks, Princeton Univ.

As of November, I’ve been given a Concurrent appointment in the Notre Dame Law School (as Concurrent Associate Professor of Law). In Spring 2011, I’ll be teaching a graduate seminar  on The Atlantic World 1650-1800 and a First Amendment course for English and Law students.

I have some exciting events on the schedule in the coming months.

On November 15, I’ll be presenting a paper– “Seldenism”– at the University of Virginia Law School’s Law & Humanities Workshop.

In January 2011 I’m chairing three panels at the MLA Convention in Los Angeles, all under the rubric of the Discussion Group on Law as Literature. Here is the full lineup:

Friday, 07 January

257. Law and Culture in the Age of Revolutions
12:00 noon-1:15 p.m., Diamond Salon 8, J. W. Marriott.

Presiding: Molly Farrell, Ohio State Univ.
1. “Blackstone’s (Anti)Revolutionary Gothic,” Kathryn D. Temple,
Georgetown Univ.
2. “Legal Speculation: The Vesey Conspiracy and Revolutionary
Failure,” Carrie Hyde, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick
3. “Law and the Waning of Authorial Anonymity,” Robert J. Griffin,
Texas A&M Univ., College Station

Saturday, 08 January
553. Regulating Culture: Constitutional Rights and Norms

1:45-3:00 p.m., 404B, LA Convention Center.Program arranged by the Discussion Group on Law as Literature and the Division on Twentieth-Century American Literature

Presiding: Caleb Smith, Yale Univ.
1. “Bad Tendencies: American Modernism and the First Amendment,”
Peter Mallios, Univ. of Maryland, College Park
2. “Supreme Court Jurisprudence, Fictional Jurisgenesis,” Margaret
Hunt Gram, Harvard Univ.
3. “Novels for Hire: A Regulatory Approach to the Growing Problem of
Hybrid Speech,” Zahr Said Stauffer, Univ. of Virginia

Sunday, 09 January
699. Constitutional Culture and Literary History
8:30-9:45 a.m., 402A, LA Convention Center

Presiding: Elliott Visconsi, Yale Univ.
1. “Measure for Measure and the Institution of the Common Law,”
Bernadette Meyler, Cornell Univ.
2. “The English Novel, Human Rights, and Habeas Corpus Jurisprudence,
1789-1820,” Sarah E. Winter, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs
3. “Weimar 1919: Walter Benjamin’s Constitutional Criticism,”
Thomas Oliver Beebee, Penn State Univ., University Park
4. “Reading Veils,” Peter Brooks, Princeton Univ.

And in August 2011, I’ll be traveling to Tokyo to deliver a lecture at the International Milton Symposium.

As of July 1, 2010 I am Associate Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame.

Literary History and Constitutional Culture

For the MLA’s next conference in Los Angeles, the Discussion Group on Law and Literature invites paper proposals (abstract plus cv to elliott.visconsi@yale.edu, by March 15) that address the relationship, broadly understood, between constitutional change and literary history. Some general questions: what influence do constitutional decisions have on the path of literary history, and to what degree can such decisions or events be said to transform or deflect a literary tradition? Papers that take a theoretical approach to the question are welcome (e.g. can the literary be understood as a modality of popular constitutional interpretation?), as are papers addressed to a concrete moment or event (e.g. LGBT literature after Lawrence v. Texas; LDS fiction in the wake of Reynolds v. United States, the literary history of slavery after Somersett’s case, Franco-Islamic literature after the 2004 headscarf laws, etc. Paper proposals from all legal and literary traditions are welcome.

A nice review of my book in the online journal  Jotwell, “a space where legal academics will go to identify, celebrate, and discuss the best new legal scholarship.” Jotwell looks like a terrific resource for scholars in and near the legal academy.

I’m home from Menaggio, Italy, where I delivered a plenary lecture– Blasphemy and Solitude: Race, Religion, and the Limits of Pluralism in Contemporary England– to the Nordic Network for Law and Literature.

I’m spending the year studying US and comparative constitutional law at Yale Law School courtesy of a Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship.  The major focus of my current research touches on the cultural and legal history of the separation of church and state;  this project is moving towards a book entitled “The Invention of Civil Religion: Church and State in Post-Revolutionary England and America.” A published article “The Invention of Criminal Blasphemy: Rex v. Taylor (1676)” is an indication of the kind of work I’m pursuing at this moment. A second piece on religion and toleration in New England war narratives is soon to be published as “King Philip’s War and the Edges of Civil Religion in 1670s London,” in a collection edited by Tom Corns and Tony Claydon, Religion, Culture and the National Community in the 1670s (Cardiff: Univ. of Wales Press, 2009). I have some general-interest writing on this topic in press, such as God Help the Queen! in a July issue of The  New Statesman.

Other odds and ends on my desk:

an article on the nexus of race and religion in contemporary England