Mar 28, 2024  
OHIO University Undergraduate Catalog 2020-21 
    
OHIO University Undergraduate Catalog 2020-21 [Archived Catalog]

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ENG 3570 - Law and Literature


This course examines the relationship between law and literature, beginning by focusing on their similarities in techniques and goals before moving to an exploration of how they approach questions of justice, morality, and fairness in very different ways. The course will explore how law and literature perform complementary yet often opposing functions in culture and society. Our readings in literary texts will explore the various ways that literature and law interact, as literature will be observed both to illuminate the workings of justice and its assumptions for readers as well as addressing flaws in legal systems, often turning readers against the laws that govern them and challenging citizen-readers to demand that their laws actually be just and equitable.

Requisites: Tier I English
Credit Hours: 3
General Education Code: 2HL
Repeat/Retake Information: May be retaken two times excluding withdrawals, but only last course taken counts.
Lecture/Lab Hours: 3.0 lecture
Grades: Eligible Grades: A-F,WP,WF,WN,FN,AU,I
Learning Outcomes:
  • Students will be able to compare how law and literature approach justice, equity, morality, and punishment.
  • Students will be able to demonstrate an understanding of the place of empathy in literary works and legal systems.
  • Students will be able to demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between literature and law.
  • Students will be able to describe how literature has been employed to criticize, oppose, and reform the legal system.
  • Students will be able to explain how laws and legal systems utilize literary techniques.
  • Students will use critical skills and contextual knowledge to analyze literary treatments of the law across various cultures and time periods.



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