This course will offer an introduction to some major texts in the study of law and literature. The course is a Critical Theory offering, so the major focus of the readings will be in philosophy, Marxism, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis and theories of literary and cultural study. We will also read three novels to explore theoretical questions in relation to literary practice. Students may choose to write on a text from outside the class but must demonstrate its relevance to the course objectives.

This course will be broken down into three sections: the first section will explore continental traditions in the philosophy of law, including basic readings in social contract theory and its post-structuralist, psychoanalytic, Marxist and post-colonial critiques. The second section will turn to literary and cultural studies of the law, in which the domain of literary practice is situated in relation to both the abstract idea of law and the historical formation of legal institutions. The third section will provide case studies in law and literature -- and this is where we get to have a little fun. If we have a good conversation together, this final section of the course is likely to challenge everything we have read before. The breach between critical approaches to law and critical approaches to literature is a fascinating product of “modern” institutionalizations of intellectual labor. In this final section, we will have the chance to ask how “law” and “literature” become specific domains of institutional and intellectual practice, looking at how these domains produce both hegemonic and radically heterogeneous logics of race, nation, and empire. Case studies will be taken from novels, critical legal studies, critical race studies, cultural studies, and post-colonial, feminist, and queer critique. The case studies will primarily focus on the cultural formations and institutional legacies of the United States, but we will situate them in relation to transnational and neo-imperial studies of modern power.

Critical readings will include selections from the following authors: Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes; Marx, Nietzche, Fanon; Arendt, Benjamin, Derrida; Freud, Lacan, Butler; Franke, Haney Lopez, Crenshaw, Brown, Asad, Halley; Dimmock, Best, Foucault, Gilmore, Thomas, Patricia Williams, Raymond Williams, Hall. We will also read a few of the following (haven’t decided yet): Herman Melville, “Bartleby the Scrivener”; Charles Chesnutt, “The Wife of His Youth”; Mark Twain, "Puddnhead Wilson"; Pauline Hopkins, "Contending Forces"; Franz Kafka, "The Trial"; Rabih Alameddine, "KoolAids"; Lawrence Chua, "Gold By the Inch".