Spring 2010
Law No.: LAW7061
Sched. No.: 110217958 |
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Administrative Information:
| Days, Times (Room): | TWR, 1300-1400 (WB105)
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| Credits: | 3 | Type: | Lecture |
| Capacity: | 44 **This information is current as of 11/24/2009 06:49:08 AM** |
| Current Enrollment: | 43 **This information is current as of 11/24/2009 06:49:08 AM**
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Course Description:
We begin with the premise that we can know more about both law and literature by thinking not just 'about' each one but 'through' each one. In the first half of the course, we read literature through texts drawn from two areas of substantive law: torts and immigration. In the second half of the course, we move away from these legal frameworks, and read cases and texts selected with recourse to a set of concepts that originate in literature and literary criticism. We will focus on authorship, gender, originality, and self-fashioning –or the creation of a self through language— and the way legal mandates may shape that self-fashioning. Throughout, we will be interested in the ways literature represents, resists, and reworks models of legal thinking and legal action. In turn, we will consider how legal storytelling sometimes subverts narrative forms and patterns to innovative ends.
Our reading list will include works by Auden, Capote, Frost, Glaspell, Gordimer, Gurnah, Salih, and Shakespeare, and cases by Breyer, Cardozo, Learned Hand, Leval, Kozinski, Posner and Scalia. Students will be asked to turn in several two-page responses to the readings.
NOTE: Laptops prohibited during class sessions.
COURSE REQUIREMENT: Examination (based on question provided in advance) or a substantial research paper on a topic approved by the instructor