Osnabrück Summer Institute on the Cultural Study of the Law

We want to thank all participants of the 2017 Osnabrück Summer Institute on the Cultural Studies of the Law for an invigorating week and an inspiring final symposium. It is always a great honor to host such talented young researchers and this year certainly has been no exception. This was never clearer than during the final symposium (here is the program), which featured insightful presentations and discussions on topics as wide ranging as ‘legal performance art,’ land access and rights, and the legal logics employed by civil rights programs.

The symposium concluded this year’s OSI and this means we would also like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to the convenors: Marianne Constable, Danilo Mandic, Cristina S. Martinez, Sabine N. Meyer, Richard Perry, Beth Piatote, and Leti Volpp. Our thanks also go out to all the student assistants who kept things running smoothly, Irina Brittner for her tireless dedication, was well as to our sponsors and collaborating institutions.

We hope to see all of you again, soon!

As the deadline for applications is quickly approaching (May 15), here is the final program for this year’s Osnabrück Summer Institute on the Cultural Studies of the Law. For one week this August, the OSI will provide young scholars interested in the intersections of Law and the Humanities with the opportunity to have in-depth discussions of current issues in the field, to share their work with their peers as well as experienced researchers, and to meet and exchange ideas with colleagues from around the globe.

The OSI 2017 will feature four core workshops:

1. Claiming Interdisciplinarity in Cultural Legal Studies
   • Conveners: Richard Perry, Peter Schneck
2. Claiming the Past, Belonging for the Future / Immigration, Citizenship, and Property
   • Conveners: Marianne Constable, Leti Volpp
3. Real and Performative Properties
   • Conveners: Beth Piatote, Sabine N. Meyer
4. Cultural Productions, Contentious Properties
   • Conveners: Danilo Mandic, Cristina S. Martinez

For the full program, please visit the program page.

The first convener of Workshop 4 “Cultural Productions, Contentious Properties” is new to the OSI, as this will be Danilo Mandic‘s first visit to Osnabrück as part of the OSI faculty. He is currently a Postdoctoral Teaching and Research Fellow at the Centre for Law, Society and Popular Culture, Westminster Law School, University of Westminster in London. He received a doctorate in 2014 for a thesis concerning the relation between copyright and technology titled ‘Copyright and Technology: Hearing the Dissonance’ from the same school. In addition to copyright law, his research interests include, critical legal theory, art and law, senses, media and sound studies.

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We are proud to introduce OSI-alumni Cristina S. Martinez as the second convenor of Workshop 4 ” Cultural Productions, Contentious Properties.” She is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa. 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.

Her research focuses on eighteenth-century art and culture, in particular British art, and the historical interactions between visuality and law, political satire and libel law. She is also interested in copyright law and the use of appropriation strategies in modern and contemporary art. She has presented her work on art and law at Yale Law School’s library, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington; the Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow; and Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts in New York. She has also presented her work at conferences in the U.K., Switzerland, Australia and Canada. This summer, she is co-organizer of the panel ‘Copyright Law and the Visual’ at the Law and Society Association to be held in Mexico City, 20-23 June 2017. Continue Reading »

We are very happy to announce that Leti Volpp will return to this year’s OSI as the second convenor of Workshop 2 “Claiming the Past, Belonging for the Future.” She is the Robert D. and Leslie Kay Raven Professor of Law at Berkeley Law, where her research focuses on questions of immigration and citizenship. She has served as a Visiting Professor affiliated with the Amerika-Institut of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and as past Faculty for the Osnabrück Summer Institute on the Cultural Study of Law. Her honors include two Rockefeller Foundation Humanities Fellowships, a MacArthur Foundation Individual Research and Writing Grant, and the Association of American Law Schools Minority Section Derrick A. Bell, Jr., Award. She is a member of the International Scientific Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.

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