Osnabrück Summer Institute on the Cultural Study of the Law

Cristina S. Martinez will return to Osnabrück, bringing her expertise in art history and the law to the 2015 Osnabrück Summer Institute. Together with Martin Zeilinger, she will convene the introductory workshop on interdisciplinarity, Humanities and the Law.

She holds a PhD in Art History and Law from Birkbeck College, University of London, and completed a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto. Cristina S. Martinez is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa and a lecturer in the School for Studies in Art and Culture, Carleton University. She is currently working on her book  ‘Art, Law and Order: The Legal Life of Artists in Eighteenth-century Britain’ which will be published by Manchester University Press. The forthcoming book has been recognized by the Historians of British Art with its annual Publication Award. Continue Reading »

We are happy to announce that Dr. Martin Zeilinger will join the Summer Institute as a faculty member again, sharing his expertise in law and culture in the introductory workshop “The Complex Relation between Culture and Law: Methods, Concepts, and Approaches.”

Martin Zeilinger holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Toronto. His research interests include appropriation as an artistic practice in analog and digital media; theories of authorship, creativity and cultural ownership; and alternative intellectual property models emerging in digital creative communities. Continue Reading »

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.”

We are happy to announce that – due to the strong interest in this year’s Institute – we will offer additional slots for participation. We will therefore extend the application deadline until April 6!

For those who have already applied: we will start the selection process soon and will send out admission letters within a month from the new deadline.