Curriculum Guide · Courses

Professor West

J.D. Seminar 289 | 3 credit hours

This seminar will explore connections between legal practice, legal studies, and the humanities. We will examine various works of canonical literature that are in some way concerned with jurisprudential themes, such as Aeschylus's classic drama The Oresteia, Melville's novellas Billy Budd, Sailor and Bartleby the Scrivener, John Barth's novel The Floating Opera, Glaspell's short story Jury of Her Peers, and Toni Morrison's Beloved (these readings may be revised later before the spring 2013 semester begins). We will then look at the emerging discipline of Law and Culture, focusing on scholarship pertaining to legal films, the causal relations between popular culture and legal norms, and the nature of legal culture itself. Third, we will examine various theories of interpretation, as they pertain to the meaning of legal, literary and cultural texts. Lastly, we will examine some modern calls to re-invigorate legal education by infusing it with insights and methods drawn from the study of the humanities.

Students may not receive credit for this and Law and Literature Seminar or Judicial Themes in Literature Seminar or Jurisprudence in Literature Seminar.