Osnabrück Summer Institute on the Cultural Study of the Law

As the last contributor to our lecture series of this year’s Osnabrück Summer Institute on the Cultural Study of the Law, we are happy to announce Richard Perry. Prof. Perry will speak on “A Law of Natures, Nations, Nativs, and Narratives” on Thursday, 14 August 2014, at 9.30 am in room 11/212. Richard Perry is Lecturer-in-Residence and Senior Fellow in Legal Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also Professor of Justice Studies at San Jose State University. His research currently focuses on questions of temporal ordering after the alleged end of history.

Abstract:

It is generally recognized that legal rights claims – whether private property rights, collective-cultural rights, or even the jus cogens of human rights claims – are speech acts that may “do things with words” by virtue of their illocutionary force that is made explicit in the lexical-grammatical forms in which they are uttered and as that force is rendered performatively intelligible against the background of the canonical discourse genre of “Narrating the Nation” (Bhabha 1990).

This presentation will reflect on Judith Butler’s recent accounts of performativity in politico-legal discourse (in Who Sings the Nation-State? with Spivak 2007, and in Dispossession: The Performative in the Political with Athanasiou 2013). Primary data considered will include legal cases from Calvin’s Case (1608) to the present time, as well as other materials. The audience is hereby cautioned that media may be mixed in your presence.

We are happy to announce  our next focus lecture within the context of this year’s Osnabrück Summer Institute on the Cultural Study of the Law. Prof. Karen-Margrethe Simonsen will talk about “The Comedy and the Politics of Natural Rights” on Tuesday, 12 August 2014, at 6 pm in room 11/212.

Karen-Margrethe Simonsen is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the Research Group “Humanistic Studies of Human Rights” at Aarhus University, Denmark. Her research focuses on law and literature, justice in classic literary texts, world literature, and human rights.

Abstract: This talk will argue that comedy is an apt genre for reflections on the political functions of human or natural rights. The premise is that human or natural rights is a discourse appropriated both by perpetrators and victims. Therefore, in order to understand how rights work within a political context one needs to analyze the ‘relation’ between dominant and dominated. Comedy is especially apt at this as it is a genre hugely occupied with power and the downfall of power. I will take my point of departure in Lope de Vega’s comedy “The New World Discovered by Christopher Columbus” from 1598-1603. Theoretically, this talk is mainly inspired by Alenka Zupančič and Etienne Balibar. A supplementary argument is that by looking at this early history of natural rights, we can modify our understanding of the modernity of human rights.

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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