The Politics of Difference and the Threshold of Law March 31 – April 1 8:30 am - 5:00 pm ALBANY LAW SCHOOL 80 New Scotland Ave 1928 Building -- Room 200 Friday Coffee / Breakfast 8:30 – 9:00 Welcome / Introduction 9:00 – 9:20 Peter Halewood, Albany Law School Alicia Ouellette, President, Albany Law School Session 1 9:20 – 10:30 Stephen Gottlieb (Albany Law) “Can Education Save Democracy?” Ryan Irwin (History, UAlbany), "Free World, Cold War" Session 2 10:35 – 12:00 Sarah Rogerson (Albany Law) “Stoic Feminism: Using the Master’s Tools to Renovate the Master’s House” Lisa Campo-Engelstein (Albany Medical College), “Rape as a Hate Crime: An Analysis of New York Law” Kristen Hessler (Philosophy, UAlbany), "Women's Human Right to Equality in International Courts." Lunch 12:00 – 1:00 Session 3 1:00 – 2:40 Alyssa Rodriguez (Albany Law '18): “An Effeminate Patriot: Reconstructing Sexual Equality in Marine Combat Roles” Erin Kilmer (Albany Law '18) “Psychopaths and Law: What Psychopaths Can Teach Us About the Use of Morality in Law Making” Emma Tiner (Albany Law '18) “A Natural Law and Interpretive Approach to Judicial Leadership in Reentry Court Settings” Racquel Saddler (Albany Law '18) “Affirmative Action Policies, Critical Race Theory, and John Rawls: Debunking Higher Education Admissions in the United States.” Break 2:40 – 3:00 Session 4 3:00 – 4:30 Keynote Address, Charles Shepherdson Conference Banquet Navona – 289 New Scotland Ave, Albany, NY 6:00 Saturday Coffee / Breakfast 8:30 – 9:00 Session 1 9:00 – 10:20 Chair, Richard Barney (English, UAlbany) Beverly Yuen Thompson (Sociology, Siena College) "Marijuana Policy Contradictions at the International, Federal, and State Level" William Lewis (Philosophy, Skidmore College) “Althusser on Laws Natural and Juridical” Christian Sundquist (Albany Law) “Genetics, Privacy and Racial Difference” Session 2 10:25 – 11:45 (Chair, Donna Young, Albany Law) Anthony Farley (Albany Law) "Critical Race Theory & the Critique of Political Economy." Derik Smith (English, UAlbany) "The Bounty of Brutality: Spectacles of Punishment in the Neoliberal Era" John Drabinski (Black Studies, Amherst College) “Necropolitics and the Question of Panther Violence” Lunch 12:00 – 1:00 Session 3 1:00 – 2:00 Nimu Njoya (Political Science, Williams College) “Ethical Responsibility before the Law: Tragedy, Democracy, and the Foreigner” Barbara Sutton (Women’s Studies, UAlbany) "Terror, Torture, and Transitional Justice: The Politics of Difference in Collective Memories of Atrocity" Break 2:00 – 2:20 Session 4 2:20 – 4:00 Roundtable Discussion |
Jellyfish? - One might wonder. . . For the "politics of difference," an invitation to the imagination. An image of otherness, foreign, strange, exotic, on the fringe of the recognizable human world, but like us, a vulnerable form of life, fragile and dependent, like us, able to move, but hurtled through the ocean on waves that are vastly more powerful than any motion directed by the individual jellyfish self, as we are moved through space beyond the speed of any human invention, at vastly greater velocities, by planetary and galactic forces that the individual cannot even feel. "The imagination is more important than knowledge," Einstein famously said.
Cnidaria Scyphozoa, the phylum and class of so-called "true jellies," including a subphylum pictured here, classified by Linnaeus in 1752 under the name Medusozoa: yes, after the famous Medusa, whose petrifying gaze was transformed when her unfortunate head, having been taken by the hero Perseus, son of Danae, was presented as a gift to the goddess Athena, who accepted this severed head (a female victim, like the Sphinx, the Erinyes, Charybdis, daughter of Poseidon and Gaia, and many others) and placed the image of the snaky-haired monster on her shield, the Aegis, where it no longer petrifies its victim, but serves instead as a beautiful image of Athena's power, and reminds us of the respect that is due to her laws.
The aporia of justice: A jellyfish at the heart of Athenian democracy.
Cnidaria Scyphozoa, the phylum and class of so-called "true jellies," including a subphylum pictured here, classified by Linnaeus in 1752 under the name Medusozoa: yes, after the famous Medusa, whose petrifying gaze was transformed when her unfortunate head, having been taken by the hero Perseus, son of Danae, was presented as a gift to the goddess Athena, who accepted this severed head (a female victim, like the Sphinx, the Erinyes, Charybdis, daughter of Poseidon and Gaia, and many others) and placed the image of the snaky-haired monster on her shield, the Aegis, where it no longer petrifies its victim, but serves instead as a beautiful image of Athena's power, and reminds us of the respect that is due to her laws.
The aporia of justice: A jellyfish at the heart of Athenian democracy.
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