Beyond Boundaries: Law, Race, and Design: Examining the St. Louis Story

3 units

This interdisciplinary course focuses on the intersection of law, race, and design in St. Louis. From Dred Scott to Ferguson, St. Louis has served as a focal point for some of the most important issues in our country's long and still unfinished work toward racial equality. The law has played an important role in these developments; judicial opinions, city ordinances, and commission reports have shaped how we understand questions of race and equality. But the law is not simply the written word: it involves people, practices, places, and the stories we tell about them. How we communicate our stories ultimately affects how we understand those stories and how we understand ourselves. This course situates law within stories and equips students to communicate those stories in ways that draw from a range of communication design methodological tools. Using design research, thinking, and a human-centered design approach, this course will challenge students to connect the words of legal documents with the experiences of those whose lives are situated by them. There will be two required self-guided visits outside of normal class time, each of which should take 2.5 - 3 hours, including travel to and from the site. Accommodations for normal class sessions (either ending early or canceling class) will take place to offset some of this time commitment. This is a Bear Bridge course required for all first-year students in the Beyond Boundaries program; it is open only to students in the Beyond Boundaries program.