Adam Fales

This course explores what literature can teach us about the law, and vice-versa. Through fiction, films, statutes, and court cases drawn from the legal and literary history of the United States, students will ask questions such as: How do legal concepts rely on literary techniques such as storytelling? What laws shape literature, both in its writing and in its reception in society? And how do we interpret the language of both literary and legal texts? Course topics will be organized roughly around major practice areas of the law—such as contracts, torts, property, constitutional, and criminal law—as well as cases presently before the Supreme Court. Students interested in legal and non-legal careers alike will explore the history, context, and unfolding present of the laws and literature of the United States. Likely readings include work by authors Charles Chesnutt, Herman Melville, and Toni Morrison as well as landmark court cases Plessy v. Ferguson, Griswold v. Connecticut, and Obergefell v. Hodges.

In this course, students will read Herman Melville’s 1851 Moby-Dick; or, the Whale. Through this text, we will explore a variety of issues still relevant to our contemporary moment, including questions of racial prejudice, environmental destruction, violence against both human and nonhuman beings, and threats to democracy. Students will engage with a variety of critical perspectives, including those from queer theory, Black studies, ecocriticism, Marxism, feminism, and book history. In addition to a thorough understanding of this one text, students will gain a deeper understanding of Melville’s career, his historical context, and creative adaptations of his work since its nineteenth-century publication.