Greta Olson

At the University of Giessen, I wish to facilitate work on the nexus between political and artistic practices and academic analysis, and am interested in mentoring projects concerning cultural approaches to law/Law and Literature, the politics of form, critical media studies, American Studies, and feminism and sexuality studies. As a general editor of EJES, I wish to encourage proposals for special issues that span divides between cultural theory, literary analysis, and linguistics and reflect on the study of English within Europe. With Jeanne Gaakeer, I run the European Network for Law and Literature Research.

Newest publication:

Laura Borchert and I wrote an essay about narrative authority, affective unreliability, and transing law:

• Olson, Greta and Laura Borchert. “Transing” / “Narrative Authority, Affective Unreliability, and Transing Law,” Research Handbook in Law and Literature. Ed. Daniela Gandorfer, Cecilia Gebruers, and Peter Goodrich. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. 378-400.

Upcoming event:

Forthcoming

Olson, Greta. From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect (Forthcoming Oxford UP).

In an elegant historical and incisive theoretical intervention, From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect traces the imaginative possibilities and critical potential of the jurisliterary. Olson not only provides a coruscating political accounting of the modern collision of law with literature, she also allows herself the freedom to imagine the radical potential of an expanded discipline and properly depicted art of law. This is a work that would classically be termed bene figuratus. Lavishly argued and elegantly illuminated, this book represents the coming of age of a crucial interdisciplinary conjunction in an aesthetics of legality.

Peter Goodrich, Professor of Law, Director of the Program in Law and Humanities, Cardozo Law School

Spirited, provocative, and highly readable, from Law and Literature to Legality and Affect argues that if there is any place where human complexity shows itself most, it is in the realm of affect. The strength of this book lies in the multiple disciplinary lenses Greta Olson convincingly brings together to open up new vistas to address the all too often problematic encounters of legalities and affective understandings of law in contemporary democratic societies under the rule of law. A must read for those in Law and Humanities and beyond to help further a critical-humanistic project for legal research and augment the understandings it brings to legal practice.

Jeanne Gaakeer, professor of jurisprudence at Erasmus School of Law, Rotterdam, and senior justice in the Court of Appeal, The Hague

Contact

Professor Greta Olson
Institut für Anglistik
Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen
Otto-Behagel-Straße 10 B
35394 Giessen, Germany
Tel: +49 641 – 99 30091 or – 99 3031 (Ms. Stephanie Rück, MA)
Fax: +49 641 – 99 30099

Email: Greta.Olson@anglistik.uni-giessen.de

Office hours during the semester: Please register online through Stud.IP.

The photograph above was taken by Salar Baygan for a project on celebrating white hair initiated by Andrea Leicher, Oliver Metzler, and Nicolai Tilov.