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Editor for this issue: Karolina Owczarzak <karolinalinguistlist.org>
rz.uni-hildesheim.de>Call for Papers Reconciling "Anglistik": Didactic Strategies for an Interdisciplinary Approach to Literature, Linguistics and Cultural Studies Universit�t Trier, Germany, 2-4 Oct 2003 The German university system, like academia world wide, is facing a serious identity-crisis. Changing intellectual fashions, a transforming student population with new interests and needs and an unfavourable economic climate have called into question the traditional role and structure of the institution. This crisis weighs most heavily on the humanities which, to a greater extent than more lucrative fields, must reconsider their goals and scope. The humanistic educational ideals that have traditionally informed language departments like Anglistik (English Language and Literature) seem less relevant and applicable in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The humanities have reacted to their loss of appeal by revamping their curricula and approaches to teaching: "culture," "interdisciplinarity" and "didactics" are among the keywords invoked as a response to the current challenges. This international conference at the University of Trier aims to evaluate these developments and explore their potential in English Studies from a critical perspective. We seek the middle-ground between the innovators, who have enthusiastically embraced new trends as remedies for institutional malaise, and the cultural pessimists, who critique the same tendencies as symptomatic of a social dumbing down. The conference aims to provide a platform for a critical assessment of those academic trends and a differentiated discussion of the future of the humanities. It hopes to initiate a vibrant debate around "culture," while remaining critical of jargonistic applications of the term. Above all, we take culture as a crucial point of contact between linguistics and literature, a catalyst for developing new didactic strategies and a promising avenue for integrative reconceptualisations of the study of English. The conference organisers are looking for original contributions (30-min presentation plus discussion) on thematic and methodological aspects of cultural studies, questions of interdisciplinarity (especially regarding the conjunction of linguistics and literature) and the didactic realisation of such projects, whether from a purely theoretical or more concrete perspective. Please submit a 300-word abstract (by e-mail - word, RTF or plain text format - or in hard copy) to either of the conveners by 31 Dec 2002. For further information, please contact: Dr. Andrea Gerbig, gerbigMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
www.ip.rm.cnr.it>Call for contributions For a SPECIAL ISSUE of the Artificial Intelligence and Law Journal (Kluwer), on LEGAL ONTOLOGIES (Aldo Gangemi (ISTC/CNR), Daniela Tiscornia (ITTIG/CNR), Italy, guest editors) http://ontology.ip.rm.cnr.it/AI&LawCall.html Legal ontologies are an important and fruitful field of research for people working in legal information systems. They are also an interesting topic for scientists who traditionally do not belong to the AI and Law Community, such as those who develop standards, ontologies, or methodologies for information exchange (as in Semantic Web initiatives), as well as those studying the social behaviour of electronic agents and of multiple agents interaction, will find this topic of interest. However, the definition of the components and basic features of an ontology for law still needs solid theoretical grounds, which should be acceptable for legal philosophers and theorists. The aim of the issue is to provide an investigation of the state of the art in the field, and to collect contributions from different perspectives and from various experienced experts, with the goal of identifying an international community aimed at reaching a common methodology. Authors are strongly encouraged to present extended examples illustrating how their ontologies are used. As pointers to some previous or current initiatives in the field, the Legont Workshops [http://www.lri.jur.uva.nl/jurix2001/legont2001.htm] and the LegOntoWeb Working Group within the OntoWeb IST Thematic Network [http://ontology.ip.rm.cnr.it/legontoweb.html] should be mentioned. Topics of interest may include: General: Ontologies for general legal concepts Ontologies for specific legal domains Applications of legal ontologies Reasoning with legal ontologies Languages and tools for representing legal ontologies Task-oriented: NLP techniques for legal ontology learning Ontologies and legal metadata standards Specific: Ontological characterization of norms and norm dynamics Ontology of legal persons and institutions Reality and the Law Epistemology vs. ontology in the legal domain Ontological treatment of legal open-textured concepts Ontologies for ethical concepts and specific domains of professional ethics Submission Contributions should be submitted via e-mail to one of the two editors by March 30, 2003. Aldo Gangemi Laboratory for Applied Ontology ISTC-CNR (Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione) Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council Viale Marx 15 00137 Roma Italy tel +39.06.86090249 fax +39.06.824737 mailto://gangemiMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue