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Prof. Dr. Greta Olson

Justus Liebig University Giessen

Curriculum Vitae

Greta Olson studied philosophy and studio art at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, as well as art history and philosophy at University College London and holds a master’s degree in philosophy and English from the University of Freiburg. There she also received her PhD in English, philosophy, and comparative linguistics as well as the venia legendi in American and English literature and cultural studies for her habilitation thesis “‘Criminal Beasts’ and the Rise of Positivist Criminology – From Shakespeare to Dickens”. From 2000 to 2002 Greta Olson worked as a lecturer at the University of Freiburg and was a guest lecturer at the Universities of Innsbruck (2001) and Basel (2003). From 2002 to 2003 she was a guest professor in American studies at the University of Bonn. In 2004, she became assistant professor under the auspices of a German Research Foundation grant at the University of Freiburg, before she moved to Giessen, where she became Professor of English and American literature and cultural studies at Justus Liebig University in 2009. Professor Olson is a general editor of the European Journal of English Studies (EJES), and, with Jeanne Gaakeer, the co-founder of the European Network for Law and Literature. Her research interests include Law and Literature/cultural approaches to law, the politics of narrative forms, critical US American Studies, and feminist and sexuality studies. Following a first research stay at the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities “Law as Culture” from April to September 2014, she was from April to September 2016, once again Fellow in Bonn. Since September 2017 she is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board.

Selected Publications

  • [mit Sonja Schillings, eds.] Special Issue of On_Culture on “Law Undone: De-humanizing, Queering, and Dis-abling the Law – Further Arguments for Law’s Pluralities.” Vol. 3, Summer 2017.
  • [mit Franz Reimer, eds.] Special issue of the German Law Journal on Law’s Pluralities. Vol. 18, Issue 2, March 2017.
  • [mit Sarah Copland, eds.] Special issue of the European Journal of English Studies on The Politics of Form. Vol. 20, Issue 3, December 2016 (Taylor & Francis).
  • “The Turn to Passion: Has Law and Literature become Law and Affect?” Special Issue on “Legal Bodies: Corpus/Persona/Communitas,“ Law & Literature 28.3 (2016): 335-353.
  • “The Turn to Passion: Has Law and Literature become Law and Affect?” Special Issue on “Legal Personhood.” Ed. Frans-Willem Korsten and Yasco Horstmann. Law and Literature 2016.
  • “Futures of Law and Literature: A Preliminary Overview from a Culturalist Perspective.” Recht und Literatur im Zwischenraum/Law and Literature In-Between: Aktuelle inter- und transdisziplinäre Zugänge/Contemporary Inter- and Transdisciplinary Approaches. Ed. Christian Hiebaum, Susanne Knaller, Doris Pichler, Bielefeld: transcript 2015. 37-69.
  • “Towards a Comparative and Localized Study of Brazilian Law and Literature.” Direito e Literatura na Virada do Milênio/ Law and Literature at the Turn of the Millennium. Ed. Sonja Arnold and Michael Korfmann, Porto Alegre: Editora Dublinense 2014. 15-38.
  •  “‘Like a Dog’: Rituals of Animal Degradation in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and Abu Ghraib Prison.” Journal of Narrative Theory 44.1 (Spring 2014): 116-156.
  • Narration and Narrative in Legal Discourse, in: Peter Hühn et al. (Eds.): Living Handbook of Narratology, Hamburg University Press, 2014
  • Criminals as Animals from Shakespeare to Lombroso. Law and Literature Series 8, Berlin and New York: De Gruyter 2013.
  • New Theories, Models and Methods in Literary and Cultural Studies: Theory into Practice (Ed. with Ansgar Nünning), Trier: WVT 2013.
  • “Law is not Turgid and Literature not Soft and Fleshy: Gendering and Heteronormativity in Law and Literature Scholarship.” Special Issue on “Law and Humanities Futures.” Ed. Marett Leiboff. Australian Feminist Law Journal 36 (2012): 65-86.
  • Obama and the Paradigm Shift – Measuring Change (Ed. with Birte Christ), Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter 2012.
  • 9/11 Ten Years On (Ed.). Special Issue of Der Fremdsprachliche Unterricht Englisch 111 (May) 2011.
  • Current Trends in Narratology (Ed.), Berlin and New York: De Gruyter 2011.
  • ‘De-Americanizing Law-and-Literature Narratives: Opening up the Story.’ Law & Literature 22.1. 2010.
  • ‘Law, Literature, and Language.’ European Journal of English Studies 11.1 (Ed. with Martin Kayman), Routledge 2007.
  • In the Grip of the Law: Trials, Prisons and the Space Between (Ed. with Monika Fludernik), Frankfurt: Peter Lang 2004.
  • Reading Eating Disorders: Writings on Bulimia and Anorexia as Confessions of American Culture. Frankfurt: Peter Lang 2003.