Law and Literature

Although separate disciplines, legal and literary study share common tools, assumptions, and methods. Both operate in the medium of language and are thus inseparable from its vagaries. Both revolve around fundamental questions of representation and interpretation, employ practices of close reading and emblematic case study, and depend upon overlapping assumptions about convention and precedent. Students adopting this concentration will take courses that will introduce them not only to representations of the law in literary texts, but also to the theories of reading, representation, and interpretation that form the foundation of both legal and literary analysis.