This course explores the complex relationship between literature and law, focusing on how each represents and responds to violence and its aftermath, especially in terms of memory and repair. Our goal will not be to judge the efficacy of literary and legal projects, but rather to study how they imagine and enact issues of testimony, commemoration, apology, forgiveness, and reconciliation. We will seek to understand how different forms of life correspond to the various legal theories and codes we’ll encounter, and how literature challenges or corroborates these specifically legal subjects, life worlds, and behaviors. We will also ask whether there are cases in which literature intervenes in jurisprudence, imagining or demanding its own model of law. The class will explore these issues in relation to existing twentieth-century juridical paradigms such as postwar military trials, human rights, reparations, and reconciliation.

Units: 1

Max Enrollment: 15

Crosslisted Courses: PEAC 334

Prerequisites: At least one literature course in any department or by permission of the instructor to other qualified students.

Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature

Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Spring