Kafka’s selected stories, Norton Critical Edition
The Merchant of Venice
The city and the city, Melville
This course examines a range of popular cultural and theoretical texts that discuss and portray law, justice, and related matters. By bringing together theory, law, and culture, students will have the unique opportunity to engage in a comparative evaluation of what law means to wider society, what law does outside of traditional legal modes, and how law envelops us all, with consequences ranging from the brutal to the brilliant and the weird. Using a number of authoritative, critical, and popular texts, students will be encouraged to develop their skills in close reading, comparative analysis, and critique. The course will enable students to become engaged readers of legal and theoretical narratives.