Apr
11
2017
OSI
As the first convener in this series, we would like to introduce Osnabrück’s own Sabine N. Meyer. Together with Beth Piatote she will convene Workshop 3 “Real and Performative Properties: Competing Claims to Citizenship, Indigeneity, and Land.” Currently, she is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the Institute of English and American Studies at Osnabrück University, Germany. Between April 2015 and March 2016, she was also a fellow at the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities “Law as Culture” at Bonn.
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Apr
10
2017
OSI
Starting this week, we will begin posting more information about the individual workshops and the conveners. We begin with Workshop 3 “Real and Performative Properties: Competing Claims to Citizenship, Indigeneity, and Land” with Beth Piatote and Sabine N. Meyer. Here is the introduction of their workshop at OSI 2017:
Scholars from various disciplines have long asserted the central role of property in the colonization of the North American continent and the emergence of the United States. The transformation of indigenous lands into private and federal property has been identified as a foundational aspect of American empire-building. Not surprisingly, debates about real property – land – dominated the relationship between Native Americans and the settler nation, particularly in the nineteenth century, in the context of the federal policies of removal and allotment. While the struggle over real property remains the bedrock of Native-settler relations, as the Standing Rock protests demonstrate, it has also generated conflicts over other, more metaphorical “properties,” such as the properties of citizenship (both tribal and U.S. citizenship) and indigeneity as such.
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Mar
06
2017
OSI
We are happy to announce the call for applications for the 7th International Osnabrück Summer Institute on the Cultural Study of the Law (OSI) today. It will be held from August 6 to 13, 2017 in Osnabrück, Germany. This year the title of the OSI is “Contentious Claims – Negotiating Ownership in Law and Culture,” a topic that is represented in the workshops that will be held by a diverse international faculty.
For more details please visit the OSI 2017 page.
Information on eligibility, the application process and fees are available on our applications page.
Dec
19
2016
OSI
We are currently hard at work planning and preparing next year’s Osnabrück Summer Institute on the Cultural Study of the Law. Today, we can announce that the 7th OSI will take place at Osnabrück University from August 6-13 2017. More details will be announced here and through our mailing list (join here!) in the first weeks of the new year. Until then: happy holidays and a happy new year!
Jul
09
2015
OSI
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 »
