Osnabrück Summer Institute on the Cultural Study of the Law

While we are currently focusing on preparing the individual events of the Summer Institute in detail and thus fine-tuning the schedule, we also had to face some significant short term developments. In effect, the 2015 OSI faculty had to be changed … and we are very happy with the result!

On the one hand, unfortunately Stephen Best had to cancel his participation in the OSI at the last moment, due to some medical complications which make it impossible for him to travel at this moment. Stephen regrets this very much, and so do we, but we also agreed that we would definitely continue to work together in the future.  For now, the OSI sends its best wishes for a speedy recovery!

On the other hand, we have been extremely lucky in finding Hoang G. Phan as a new convener, and we are tremendously grateful that he has accepted to join the OSI 2015 faculty at such short notice. Hoang G. Phan is Associate Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He received his Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley, studying literature and law from the Constitutional founding through the Civil War. In his work, Phan demonstrates how American citizenship and civic culture were profoundly transformed by the racialized material histories of free, enslaved, and indentured labor. His latest book Bonds of Citizenship: Law and the Labors of Emancipation (New York UP, 2013) illuminates the historical tensions between the legal paradigms of citizenship and contract, and in the emergence of free labor ideology in American culture. Continue Reading »

Cristina S. Martinez will return to Osnabrück, bringing her expertise in art history and the law to the 2015 Osnabrück Summer Institute. Together with Martin Zeilinger, she will convene the introductory workshop on interdisciplinarity, Humanities and the Law.

She holds a PhD in Art History and Law from Birkbeck College, University of London, and completed a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto. Cristina S. Martinez is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa and a lecturer in the School for Studies in Art and Culture, Carleton University. She is currently working on her book  ‘Art, Law and Order: The Legal Life of Artists in Eighteenth-century Britain’ which will be published by Manchester University Press. The forthcoming book has been recognized by the Historians of British Art with its annual Publication Award. Continue Reading »

We are happy to announce that Dr. Martin Zeilinger will join the Summer Institute as a faculty member again, sharing his expertise in law and culture in the introductory workshop “The Complex Relation between Culture and Law: Methods, Concepts, and Approaches.”

Martin Zeilinger holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Toronto. His research interests include appropriation as an artistic practice in analog and digital media; theories of authorship, creativity and cultural ownership; and alternative intellectual property models emerging in digital creative communities. Continue Reading »