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!

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 »