LAW 7412

Law and Humanities Colloquium

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2014-2015.

In an era of increasing interdisciplinary collaboration, the fields that comprise the humanities are engaging in new ways with law as well as with each other, and projects developed within the context of law schools themselves bear renewed relevance to the humanities. This colloquium will bring together scholars working at the forefront of legal history, law and literature, law and culture, and critical theory from the institutional vantage points of both law and the humanities. Those who present materials will be asked to speak not only about their specific research but also to address where their work is situated within new developments in law and humanities as a whole. The course will begin with three weeks of seminar designed to apprise students of the history of law and humanities to date and to situate current developments within this history. We will, for example, read classics of the law and literature movement by James Boyd White and Robert Cover, then inquire as to how recent work-such as the essays in Victoria Kahn and Lorna Hutson's collection Rhetoric and Law in Early Modern Europe-might differ in approach. The rest of the course will be organized around a series of speakers, some drawn from Cornell and some from other universities. The students will convene for a half hour at the beginning of the session, which will then be opened to a larger community, including faculty members, for the talk itself. Students will be required to write six three- to five-page papers responding to the speakers' pre-circulated talks; these will be due in advance of the class session and shown to those lecturing in order to prompt and enhance discussion. Everyone who wishes to take the course for credit must attend the first class.

When Offered Spring.

Satisfies Requirement Satisfies the writing requirement.

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