Osnabrück Summer Institute on the Cultural Study of the Law

We are happy to announce the keynote lecture of this year’s Osnabrück Summer Institute on the Cultural Study of the Law on Friday, August 8, at 7 p.m. in room 11/212. Prof. Leti Volpp will speak on “The Indigenous as Alien – The Settler Contract and a Nation of Immigrants.” Together with the mayoral reception in Osnabrück’s city hall prior to the lecture, Volpp’s keynote address constitutes the official opening of the 2014 OSI.

Leti Volpp is Robert D. and Leslie Kay Raven Professor of Law in Access to Justice, University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on citizenship, migration, culture, gender, and identity.

Abstract: Immigration law, as it is taught, studied, and researched in the United States, imagines away the fact of preexisting indigenous populations. Why is this the case?  I argue, first, that this elision reflects and reproduces how the field narrates space, time, and membership. But despite this disappearance from the field, Indians have figured in immigration law, and thus, to understand what this has meant for indigenous populations, I describe the neglected legal history of the treatment of American Indians under U.S. immigration and citizenship law. I then return to explain why Indians have disappeared from immigration law through an investigation of the relationship between We the People, the “settler contract,” and the “nation of immigrants.”

Prof. Helle Porsdam

We are happy to announce officially that Professor Helle Porsdam (University of Copenhagen) will be coming to Osnabrück in August to convene the workshop “Culture, Cultural Rights, and the Nation State” together with Prof. Leti Volpp.

Helle Porsdam is a Professor of American Studies and American History at the SAXO Institute at the University of Copenhagen. Her primary research interests are focused on American culture and intellectual history, the role of law in American history and culture, American constitutionalism, the relationship between law and politics in the US and Europe, the cultural role of human rights, and law and humanities. She was the project leader of CULTIVATE, a three-year research collaboration between the universities of Copenhagen, Uppsala, London, Utrecht and Iceland and part of the HERA Joint Research Programme for the theme “Humanities as a Source of Creativity and Innovation” (www.cultivateproject.dk).

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