Elliott Visconsi

Fall 2010

admin — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 01:19:07 +0000

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

CFP: MLA 2011

admin — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 04:21:56 +0000

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 New Review of Lines of Equity

admin — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 02:47:58 +0000

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.

Back from Italy

admin — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 01:37:19 +0000

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.

Fall 2009 Advising Hours

admin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:04:46 +0000

For student advisees:

I will be holding open office hours in my office (SY P12) on Thursday Sept. 2 and Friday Sept 3 in the mornings (roughly 930-12), though I’d ask that you make an appointment if you do plan to come by.

Works in Progress, July 2009

admin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:35:04 +0000

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:

a review of Shakespeare’s Foreign Worlds by Carole Levin and John Watkins

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