Jesús R. Velasco

J R Velasco studies Medieval and Early Modern legal cultures across the Mediterranean Basin and Europe within and outside the legal professions, from the perspective of contemporary critical thought. He is the author of Dead Voice: Law, Philosophy, and Fiction in the Iberian Middle Ages (University of Pennsylvania Press), Plebeyos Márgenes: Ficción, Industria del Derecho y Ciencia Literaria(SEMYR), or Order and Chivalry: Knighthood and Citizenship in Late Medieval Castile (University of Pennsylvania Press),among other books. He is currently writing a new book, Science de l’âme et corps du droit, and finishing his project on Microliteratures: The Margins of the Law. His articles on legal culture, chivalry, Occitan poetry, Political Theory, and other subjects have appeared in English, Spanish, French, and Catalan in journals like MLN, La Corónica, Studi Ispanici, and many others. He is interested in the practice of photography. He has published and exhibited his work in several venues. He is currently working on a photo-literary project on academic freedom. He has taught courses and seminars in Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Comparative Literature, and the Law School: Torture and Confession (with Bernard Harcourt), Foucault 13/13 (with Bernard Harcourt), On Friendship (with Claudio Lomnitz), Formes du Droit (with Emanuele Conte and Pierre Thévenin), Inquisitions, Microliteratures: The Margins of The Law, Fiction, Public Intellectuals Before Modernity, and many others. Velasco has taught at the École Normale Supérieure (Fontenay), University of Salamanca (Spain), UC Berkeley, and Columbia University —where he has been at the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, and the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought of the Law School. He has held visiting positions at Emory, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Roma Tre, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, or Paris III, among others. At Columbia, he has served as Director of Undergraduate Studies, Director of Graduate Studies, Chair of the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. 
 
 
 

Figura

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Published on February 25, 2022
Erich Auer­bach’s take on the study of the figura is not inde­pendent from the his­torical moment of anti-Judaism he was living in.

Sixth Game

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Published on February 25, 2022
In this sixth game, you may become one of the painters of the Smith­field Decretals.

Game Break

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Published on February 25, 2022
Some­times it is good –nec­essary, indeed– to read what one has written with a critical eye.

Song of Songs

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Published on January 21, 2022
On the margins of this article, there are pdf’s to two com­men­taries of the Song of Songs, that of the Spanish rabbi Arragel, who trans­lated, com­mented, and painted a Bible for the Duke of Alba in the early 15th century, and an edition of the Bible with the Ordinary Gloss and the com­men­taries of Nicholas of Lyra.

Fifth Game

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Published on January 19, 2022
Bibles, however, are also folders and full archives of indi­vidual persons and some­times their families.

Third Game

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Published on January 19, 2022
Because what is at stake is too much: pos­session, property, ownership.