Osnabrück Summer Institute on the Cultural Study of the Law

Our second Workshop will be held by Jeannine DeLombard and Bryan Wagner on the topic of Police and Person.

From Black Lives Matter, vaccine mandates, and immigration to environmental initiatives, reproductive rights, and corporate power, the terms “police” and “person” figure prominently in current legal-cultural debates. Yet, the tendency to define these terms narrowly –police as law enforcement and the person as a human being –often obscures the larger stakes of these and other controversies. With a session devoted to each term, this workshop seeks to enrich our understanding of the complex meanings that have attached to “police” and “person” in Western law and culture.We look forward to an open and wide-ranging discussion informed by, but not tethered to, our common readings.

In keeping with OSi tradition, we’re pleased to launch our institute with a workshop on interdisciplinarity, which this year will be convened by Leila Neti, Peter Schneck and Laura Zander.

The introductory workshop explores the relationship between law and culture and provides a forum for thinking about what it might mean to adopt an ‘interdisciplinary’ approach to research and teaching. It will examine the potential benefits of moving beyond a single discipline, while being mindful of the challenges confronting scholars who work at the crossroads of multiple subject areas. Our discussion will be anchored in readings that might loosely be placed under the rubric of ‘interdisciplinary analysis’, but the emphasis will be on students’ individual research projects. Along the way, we will engage with cognate issues such as the translatability and transferability of texts and concepts; the representations of gender, race, and sexuality; and the role of the critic in society. This workshop will provide a foundation for the other discussions in the week by encouraging its participants to reflect upon the assumptions, ethos, and value of their critical practic