Whiteness as Property--a symposium at UCLA School of Law, October 2-4, 2014

The Critical Race Studies program at the UCLA School of Law will hold its Eighth Symposium on October 2-4, 2014. This symposium will mark twenty years since Professor Cheryl I. Harris investigated the relationships between concepts of race and property and reflected on how rights in property are contingent on, intertwined with, and conflated with race. That investigation culminated in her groundbreaking article, Whiteness as Property (Harvard Law Review, 1993).

In 2014 we will re-visit the origins of Whiteness as Property as a theoretical frame and site of legal intervention and consider its still unfolding potential for unmasking subordination and provoking social change.

We are inviting submission of proposals. We encourage paper and panel proposals on a wide range of topics including, but not exclusively encompassing, the following:
• Whiteness as Property in relation to discourses about “post-racialism”
• Whiteness as Property and LGBT rights and litigation
• Whiteness as Property and the workplace
• Immigration reform and whiteness as property
• Whiteness as property and teaching pedagogy
• Whiteness as property and gender
• Whiteness as property and state surveillance
• Whiteness as property and gender
• Whiteness as property and the war against terrorism
• Whiteness as property and intergenerational wealth
• Whiteness as property and multiracial identity

To repeat: These themes do not exhaust possible panel or paper presentations. They are simply suggestive of topics that might be engaged.

Each proposal must include a cover page with paper titles, presenters, their affiliations, and a current email contact, along with a maximum two-page c.v. of each presenter. For individual papers, please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words. For panels, submit an overall abstract of no more than 500 words and individual paper descriptions of no more than 250 words each. Please submit materials via email to crs@law.ucla.edu with the subject line: CRS Symposium Proposal.

The deadline for submission is June 15, 2014. Scholars whose submissions are selected for the symposium will be notified no later than July 31, 2014. Submissions will be accepted on a rolling basis, so we highly encourage early submissions.