The English Department offers a Spring 2016 course focusing on the relationship between law and literature in spring semester.
ENG 3570: Law and Literature meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:30 a.m. to 11:50 a.m.
ENG 3570 counts as an Tier II Humanities & Literature (2HL) course. It is an elective course in the Law, Justice & Culture certificate. See additional courses in the Making and Breaking the Law theme. The course is open to all students who have taken a Tier I English course.
Dr. Paul Jones
The course is taught by Dr. Paul Jones, the Sam & Susan Crowl Professor of English & Director of Graduate Studies.
The class interests students from any major who have a general interest in literature and social justice, especially students in pre-law majors and the Law, Justice & Culture certificate program.
Course topics include:
- Relationship between law and literature
- Fairness
- Justice
- Morality
- Flaws in legal system
The course examines these topics by looking at the readings of Upton Sinclair, William Shakespeare, Franz Kafka, Margaret Atwood, and Herman Melville.
Making and Breaking the Law logo
Course Description: Through a sampling of literary texts by authors from various historical periods and national traditions, from ancient Greece to the contemporary United States, this course explores the relationship between law and literature, focusing both on the similarities in their techniques and goals and the very stark differences in their approaches to questions of justice, morality, fairness, and punishment. Readings explore the various ways that literature and law interact, as literature is observed to illuminate and defend the workings of justice for citizens and readers and to highlight and condemn failings in legal systems. “We will be most attentive to this last relationship as we consider how literary texts often seek to turn readers against the laws that govern them and to challenge citizens/readers to demand that their laws actually be just and equitable,” Jones says.
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