LGST 118 Law and Literature

Law and literature have been understood as separate fields of social, expressive endeavors. This class thinks about how these two modes of writing represent and reshape each other, and the social worlds in which they circulate. Students read literary texts that narrate and refigure the problems of law, justice, and legal modernity. The class mixes law and literature “classics”—Merchant of Venice, Antigone, Billy Budd—and more contemporary literature. Course also pairs readings of primary literary texts with secondary law and literature criticism.