February 29, 2008
The poetry of Professor Lawrence Joseph, Reverend Joseph
P. Tinnelly, C.M. Professor of Law, was the subject of the 2008 Law
and Literature Symposium, "Some Sort of Chronicler I Am: Narration
and the Poetry of Lawrence Joseph," on February 29, 2008, at the
University of Cincinnati College of Law. Professor
Joseph was joined in the Symposium by a group of distinguished
legal and literary scholars, including St. John's Professor of
English John Lowney, one of the country's foremost scholars on
modern American poetry. Other participants in the Symposium
included David Arthur Skeel, S. Samuel Arsht Professor of Corporate
Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School; Lisa M. Steinman, Kenan
Professor of English and Humanities, Reed College; Lee Upton,
Professor of English and Writer-in-Residence, Lafayette
College; Thomas DePietro, literary critic and essayist, and
former contributing editor of Kirkus Reviews; Eric Murphy Selinger,
Professor of English, De Paul University, Frank D. Rashid,
Professor of English, Marygrove College, and Joseph P. Tomain, Dean
Emiritus, University of Cincinnati College of Law. The
Symposium's participants used Professor Joseph's poetry as a
starting point to explore the nature of narration in poetry and its
relationship to the language of law, and other forms of narration
and language. The Symposium will be published in the
Cincinnati Law Review.
Professor Joseph graduated from the University of Michigan Law
School in 1975, after receiving Bachelor and Masters of Arts
degrees in English Literature from the University of Michigan and
the University of Cambridge. After law school, he served as
judicial law clerk for Justice G. Mennen Williams of the Michigan
Supreme Court. He was then a member of the School of Law
faculty at the University of Detroit. Professor Joseph joined
the St. John's School of Law faculty in 1987, after practicing law
with the firm of Shearman & Sterling in New York City. In
addition to his scholarship and his legal writings in the areas of
labor and employment law, tort and compensation law, legal theory
and interpretation, and law and literature, Professor Joseph has
published five books of poetry, most recently Into It, and a book
of prose, Lawyerland, as well as essays. articles, and reviews
which have appeared in leading magazines, newspapers, and
journals. His legal and literary writings have received
widespread, international critical acclaim and attention, including
a symposium, "The Lawerland Essays," which appeared in Volume 101,
No. 7, the Columbia Law Review (November 2001). Professor
Joseph has been described in Legal Affairs magazine as "the most
important lawyer-poet of our era." He has received many
awards for both his legal and literary writings, including a
fellowship from the Employment Standards Division of the United
States Department of Labor, two National Endowment for the Arts
fellowships, and a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim
Memorial Foundation. In April 2006, he received the New York
County Lawyers Association's third Law and Literature Award (after
Louis Auchincloss and Louis Begley).
More information about the event, including the full program, is
available here.