Registration will open at 11:30 am on Friday, March 22, with opening presentations starting at 12:45 pm. The last concurrent sessions will end Saturday, March 23, at 4:55 pm, with a closing and wrap-up from 5:10 to 5:30pm. For a copy of the short (4-page) program, click here, and for the long (13-page) program, click here.
Two optional, simultaneous events--an ALWD Scholars' Workshop and a Book Discussion--will take place the next morning, on Sunday, March 24.
Book Discussion
CU Legal Writing Professor Gabrielle Stafford will facilitate a book discussion about
Louise Erdrich's recent book The Round House. This book is a meditation on how storytelling, in all of its forms, is a powerful force
in shaping identity and driving events. Traditional ceremonies, dreams, religious teachings, references to popular culture, and
law are all treated as different kinds of storytelling that play an important part in shaping the narrative and the characters' identities.
Law plays a critical role in the plot of the book-the narrator is the thirteen-year-old son of a tribal judge who confronts jurisdictional issues
that prevent the prosecution of his mother's rapist. While a compelling book on its own, the book is unique in that it explicitly treats law as a
form of storytelling. It uses Felix S. Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law, actual Supreme Court cases, and fictional cases from the narrator's
father's tribal docket, along with counter-narratives, to create a space for ways of knowing and living in the world that the legal narratives ignore
or work against.
ALWD Scholars' Workshop
This ALWD-sponsored Scholars' Workshop will give participants an opportunity to receive feedback from peers on written works
in progress. Authors will likely be assigned to small groups, and each group member will receive every other group member's paper in advance, along with
any information each author may wish to share in terms of background information on the project or specific kinds of input especially desired from other
members of their group.
Participation in this ALWD-sponsored Scholars' Workshop is limited to the first 16 applicants who meet the requirements and comply with the deadlines set forth in the Call for Proposals. Please note that proposals must be received by Friday, February 22, 2013, and participants must have a draft of their paper ready to distribute to the other participants by Friday, March 1, 2013.