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ENGL 4113

WOME-4113-WA/WAO/WB/WBO: Women & Legal Narratives

Historical course

Winter 2024

Topics

  • Wk 1, - Introduction
  • I. Law in Literature
  • Wk. 2 - Law in Literature – Poetry as Socio-Legal Critique
  • Questions to assist you, if literary analysis is new to you
  • legal effects of such affect be on lawyers and judges?
  • knowledge?
  • critiques reveal about structural violence, oppression, and intersectional
  • barriers (the carceral network: the mechanisms of social control that
  • discipline and punish our bodies, usually leading to conformity, and what
  • Michel Foucault terms “docile bodies”)?
  • Do the authors offer any solutions to the legal problems they present?
  • What literary tools do the writers use to make their arguments (tone
  • metaphor, setting, characterization, etc.)?
  • What moments stood out to you most in the reading, and why?
  • Nedelsky, Jennifer. “Embodied Diversity and Challenges to the Law.” McGill Law
  • Journal, vol. 42, no. 1, 1997, et seq
  • Anderson, Kim. “RCMP.” Our Words, Our Revolutions, edited by G. S. Harding
  • Inanna Publications & Education Inc., 2000
  • Burke, Dawn. “See Me.” Our Words, Our Revolutions, edited by G. S. Harding

Readings

  • Required: My availability 2
  • Required: Smith, Minnie. Is it Just? University of Toronto Press, 2011.
  • Required: My Availability I check my work email during regular
  • Optional: Roth, Jenny and Lori Chambers. Introduction. Is it Just, by Smith, University of Toronto Press, 2011, pp. v-xxx.
  • Optional: What narratives (stories) does Smith use to argue that law is unjust?
  • Optional: How does Smith envision justice for her characters? Is this justice served by the end of the novel?
  • Optional: Why do you think Smith presents us with the very different Miss Todd and Mrs. Pierce, and/or Mr. Hastings and Mr. Pierce?
  • Optional: Why do you think she ends the novel with the blossoming relationship between Helen and Dick?
  • Optional: Wk. 5 (Feb 9): Structural Sexism in Legal Process
  • Optional: Optional Supplementary Reading:
  • Optional: Tayler, Marilyn. “Legal and Moral Justification for Homicide in Susan Glaspell’s ‘A Jury of Her Peers.’” Law, Culture and the Humanities, 15, 2, 364-381.
  • Optional: What is Glaspell’s critique of the legal system?
  • Optional: What do the women notice, and why is it important to law?
  • Optional: II. Law as Literature
  • Optional: Wk. 6 (Feb 16): Law is Interpretation and Social Location Matters
  • Optional: Binder, Guyora. “The Law-as-Literature Trope.” Law and Literature: Current Legal Issues, edited by Michael Freeman and Andrew Lewis, vol. 2, Oxford UP, 2003, pp. 63-89.
  • Optional: Graycar, Regina. “The Gender of Judgments: Some Reflections on ‘Bias.’” University of British Columbia Law Review, vol. 32, no. 1, 1998, pp. 1-21.
  • Optional: Wk. 7 (Feb. 23): Reading week! Enjoy the break. **Begin reading Gutter Child this week and have it finished by
  • Optional: Wk. 8 (Mar 1): Recognizing Dominant Narratives in Legal Decisions R v N.S., 2012 SCC 72, [2012] 3 S.C.R.
  • Optional: Chambers, Lori and Jen Roth. “Prejudice Unveiled: The Niqab in Court.” Canadian Journal of Law & Society, vol. 29, no. 3, 2014, pp. 381-395.
  • Optional: What stereotypes and cultural assumptions appear in the different Justices’ decisions?
  • Optional: What stories do the Justices legitimize about Canada, veiling, multiculturalism, women, and/or sexual assault?
  • Optional: III. Tying it Together: Literature as Legal Activism
  • Optional: Richardson, Jael. Gutter Child. HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., 2021
  • Optional: The carceral network is made up of the many mechanisms of social control that discipline and punish our bodies, creating what Michel Foucault calls “docile
  • Optional: Wk. 9 (Mar. 8): The Carceral Net(work): Gender, Race & Class – Intro to Gutter Child
  • Optional: Movements like BLM aim to shed light on racist structures in law, public policy, and peoples’ attitudes. How is Richardson’s contemporary story part of the cultural milieu of the BLM movement?
  • Optional: What different social systems exist in Richardson’s novel: how does she explore the internalization of different systems in the lives of different characters?
  • Optional: Do you find the conclusion of the novel satisfying or frustrating? Why?
  • Optional: Wk. 12. (Mar. 29) – Statutory Holiday. Monday, April 8th is the make-up day for this class: same time, usual classrooms, different day.
  • Each group will address a different aspect of the carceral net in Gutter Child. Sign-up is required by Wk. 8, March 1 at the latest. Let me know in class what your group would like to do, and I’ll update our sign-up list on D2L. Choose one of:
Sources