Walls: What They Make and What They Break

Conference Overview

For full conference details, please visit the official Walls site at UT Law.

The Texas International Law Journal (TILJ) and the The Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas School of Law are planning a joint symposium on February 25-26, 2010.  The event is co-sponsored by the South Asia Institute and the Humanities Institute.

Building on the work of the Rapoport Center’s Border Wall Working Group and its investigation into the human rights impact of the US-Mexico border wall, the conference proposes to convene a group of interdisciplinary thinkers who have researched the recent history of walls — made, unmade, in the making — and their consequences on the geographies of nation states and their neighbors, of communities both domestic and international, virtual and everyday.

Do walls create more conflict than have the crises they seek to contain, as has been argued, with regard to the Israel/Palestine wall?  What happens when walls, once fortified and relied upon, are torn down?  (Consider, for example, the consolidation of “fortress Europe” after the collapse of the Berlin wall.)  Do the walls around “gated communities” — from Johannesburg to Los Angeles to Jerusalem — function in some of the same ways as border walls?  And what about those who are left out of gated or walled spaces?  What roles will walls play in an increasingly globalized and interconnected world? What legal structures provide the foundation for the authority to build walls, and how do those legal structures vary from nation to nation?

Walls, symbolic and real, have consequences not only for people and polities, but for the surrounding — and enclosed — national and cultural environments as well. Walls impact both ways of thinking and modalities of living.

The 2-day conference proposes: first, to facilitate an interdisciplinary discussion of the effects of walls on the human rights of marginalized communities (and in the production of the marginalized status of those same communities) and their attendant environmental and cultural eventualities; second, to examine the roles of walls in re-making international borders and re-defining issues of private v. public and questions of national security; and third to consider the role of international and domestic law and legal advocacy in both challenging and sustaining walls.  TILJ expects to publish 6–10 papers resulting from the conference in its symposium issue.

Schedule

For full conference details, please visit the official Walls site.

Thursday, February 25, 2010 — Eidman Courtroom, UT School of Law

6:00 p.m.	Welcoming Remarks: Karen Engle and Barbara Harlow, University of Texas
6:10–7:15 p.m.	Keynote Address Introductory Remarks: Gretchen Ritter, University of Texas Keynote address: "Walled States, Waning Sovereignty" Wendy Brown, Emanuel Heller Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley Discussion moderated by Gretchen Ritter

Friday, February 26, 2010 — Eidman Courtroom, UT School of Law

8:30-8:55 a.m.	Breakfast and Registration
9:00–11:00 a.m.	"Why Walls are Built " Panelists: Moderator: Willy Forbath, University of Texas School of Law Andy Clarno, University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Sociology Philomila Tsoukala, Georgetown University Law Center Ranabir Samaddar, Calcutta Research Group
11:00–11:10 a.m.	Break
11:15 a.m. –12:45 p.m.	"How Walls Function" Panelists: Moderator: Kamran Ali, University of Texas Department of Anthropology Thomas Hansen, University of Amsterdam and Columbia University Department of Anthropology Hilary Josephs, Syracuse University College of Law Fernando Lara, University of Texas School of Architecture
12:50–1:50 p.m.	Lunch
2:00–4:00 p.m.	"Who Litigates over Walls " Panelists: Moderator: Karen Engle, University of Texas School of Law Denise Gilman, University of Texas School of Law Margaret Dorsey, Rio Grande Valley Folklore Archive and University of Texas Pan American Yishai Blank, Tel-Aviv University Law School Nuala Mole, Aire Centre
4:00–4:10 p.m.	Break
4:15–5:45 p.m.	Concluding Reflections: "What Future for Sovereignty and Walls?" Panelists: Moderator: Barbara Harlow, University of Texas Department of English Wendy Brown, University of California, Berkeley Department of Political Science Ranabir Samaddar, Calcutta Research Group Thomas Hansen, University of Amsterdam and Columbia University Department of Anthropology Yishai Blank, Tel-Aviv University Law School All other panelists participating in the discussion