Law and Literature

What is the relationship between law and literature? How do these supposedly separate disciplines contribute to our sense of justice and our understanding of injustice? We examine these questions through novels, legal writings, legal opinions, and film, in order to discover how law and literature create interrelated narratives that shed light on issues like identity, sexuality, injury, policing, speech, and silence. We read literary and legal narratives to see to how they inform each other, but also illuminate each other’s blind spots. Writers include Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginia Woolf, James Weldon Johnson, and Claudia Rankine. Enrollment limited to 18.