Austin Sarat, Cathrine O. Frank & Matthew Anderson (eds.)
Teaching law and literatureModern Language Association of America, New York, 2011, 510 pp.
ISBN: 9781603290920
This volume provides a resource for teachers interested in learning about the field of law and literature and shows how to bring its insights to bear in their classrooms, both in the liberal arts and in law schools. Essays in the first section, «Theory and History of the Movement,» provide a retrospective of the field and look forward to new developments. The second section, «Model Courses,» offers readers an array of possibilities for structuring courses that integrate legal issues with the study of literature, from The Canterbury Tales to current prison literature. In «Texts,» the third section, guidance is provided for teaching not only written documents (novels, plays, trial reports) but also cultural objects: digital media, Native American ceremonies, documentary theater, hip-hop. The volume’s forty-one contributors investigate what constitutes law and literature and how each informs the other.
Contents
Introduction 1
Austin Sarat, Cathrine O. Frank, and Matthew Anderson
Part I: Theory and History of the Movement
The Cultural Background of The Legal Imagination 29
James Boyd White
Law and Literature as Survivor 40
Richard H. Weisberg
Law, Literature: Where Are We? 61
Peter Brooks
Law, Literature, and the Vanishing Real: On the Future
of an Interdisciplinary Illusion 71
Julie Stone Peters
Law, Literature, and Cultural Unity:
Between Celebration and Lament 86
Robert Weisberg
Literature, Culture, and Law at Duke University 98
Robin West
Part II: Model Courses
Where the Evidence Leads:
Teaching Gothic Novels and the Law 117
Diane Hoeveler
Making Crime Pay in the Victorian Novel Survey Course 126
Lisa Rodensky
Teaching Legal Realism: A Senior Seminar
on the Realist Novel and the Law 136
Ayelet Ben-Yishai
American Undead: Teaching the Cultural Life of Civil Death 147
Caleb Smith
Teaching Legal Fiction: Law and The Canterbury Tales 155
Mary Flowers Braswell
Teaching Early Modern Literature
through the Ancient Constitution 162
Peter C. Herman
Law and Drama in the Romantic Era: A Model Course 172
Victoria Myers
Immigration, Law, and American Literature 180
Alex Feerst
Vital Visions: On Teaching Prison Literature 189
D. Quentin Miller
Using Critical Race Theory to Teach
African American Literature 197
Patricia D. Watkins
The Legal and Literary Animal 206
Alyce Miller
Native American Literature, Ceremony, and Law 217
Cristine Soliz and Harold Joseph
Free Speech and Free Love: The Law and Literature
of the First Amendment 225
Hilary Schor and Nomi Stolzenberg
“The Gollum Problem”: Teaching Performance
and/as Intellectual Property 234
Philip Auslander
Literary Evidence and Legal Aesthetics 244
Simon Stern
An Introduction to Law and Literature for English Majors 253
Brook Thomas
Law and Literature as Cultural and Aesthetic Products:
Studying Interdisciplinary Texts in Tandem 262
Valerie Karno
Literature and Law Lite: Approaches in Surveys and
General Education Courses 268
Bridget M. Marshall
Part III: Texts
Measure for Measure: No Remedy 279
Elliott Visconsi
Bleak House and the Connections between Law and Literature 288
Kieran Dolin
Guilty Reading: Obscenity Law, American Modernism,
and the Case for Teaching Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie 296
Florence Dore
Literature in Its Legal Context: Kafka 307
Theodore Ziolkowski
Dostoevsky and the Law 314
Harriet Murav
Law and Literature of the Hebrew Bible 323
Chaya Halberstam
Law and Revenge Violence: From Saga to Modern Fiction 333
David H. Fisher
Teaching Eighteenth-Century Law and Literature:
The Adventures of Rivella 345
Susan Sage Heinzelman
Law, Literature, and Feminism: Broadening the Canon
with New Texts 354
Nancy S. Marder
Neutrality in Law and Literature: Reading the
Supreme Court with Joseph Conrad 366
Ravit Reichman
How Rhetoric Shapes Cultural Legitimacy:
Teaching Law Students the Moral Syllogism 375
Greg Pingree
Roger Williams and the Law and Literature
of Colonial New England 385
Nan Goodman
Sangrado and the Cloven Foot: A Case
in Teaching Eighteenth-Century Law 394
Linda Myrsiades
Performing the Law in Contemporary Documentary Theater 407
Jacqueline O’Connor
“Fight the Power”: Hip-Hop in the Law
and Literature Classroom 415
Richard Schur
Ten Kinds of Law and Literature Texts You Haven’t Read 425
Lenora Ledwon
American Blueprints: Alternative Declarations
and Constitutions in the Protest Tradition 436
Zoe Trodd
Notes on Contributors 447
Works Cited 453
Index 497
