The Law, the Citizen, and the Literary and Cinematic Imaginations
ENGL 350
Spring 2026
| Section:
01
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| Crosslisting:
AMST 350, AFAM 350 |
What gives the law its authority? (Can it remember?) Does it have rational or mystical foundations? What are the functions of the categories of slave, savage, scapegoat, stranger, other, family, and citizen in and for the law? How do we apprehend the relationship between the extensively legalized violations of the earth, the black, and the feminine? What gives the ongoing event of the Middle Passage so much force, and on a planetary scale? If laws of hospitality are sacred, then what are the implications of their prolific sacrilege? And what, for we can trace it, do such laws¿ selective ¿application¿ have buried within them? This course will attune us to who/what may be incorporated into the body politic and who/what cannot be borne in the letter, by design, and on safeguarded, terrorizing terms -- legal, historical, and metaphysical, yes, and harboring those, ontological. We will read and analyze how literary and cinematic texts represent, critique, as well as reproduce the rhetorical and psychic effects of the law. To echo Calvin Warren, ¿[Our] concern is not a particular law, but that all the laws are subordinate to a Law.¿ Thus, while we will look at the language and aesthetic configurations of specific legal events and echoes -- the Zong Case, partus sequitir ventrem, Jim Crow, Nuremberg Laws, The Code of Native Status (in French-occupied Algeria), and so on -- we will not do so ¿comparatively¿ nor to inadvertently idolize encoded violence, but to apprehend what is buried and stirs beneath the law¿s foundations. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ENGL |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Student Option |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
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Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
There will be a Course Pack and select books available at RJ Julia Bookstore. The list below is a set of possibilities not certainties:
Toni Morrison, BELOVED
M. NourBese Phillip, ZONG!
William Faulkner, ABSALOM, ABSALOM!
Edgar Allen Poe, THE TELL-TALE HEART
FILMS BY: Euzhan Palcy, Charles Burnett, Haile Gerima, Julie Dash, Sarah Maldoror, Christian Petzold, and others.
Plato, selections from LAWS and TIMAEUS
Jacques Derrida FORCE OF LAW: THE ¿MYSTICAL FOUNDATIONS OF AUTHORITY,¿ ON COSMOPOLITANISM AND FORGIVENESS
Walter Benjamin, THE CRITIQUE OF VIOLENCE
Martin Heidegger, selections including THE QUESTION CONCERNING TECHNOLOGY
Victor Klemperer, selections from THE LANGUAGE OF THE THIRD REICH
Frantz Fanon, selections from THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH and the PYSCHIATRIC WRITINGS
Calvin Warren, selections from ONTOLOGICAL TERROR and subsequent essays
David Marriott, selections from HAUNTED LIFE
Jared Sexton, selections from writings on film, law, and philosophy
Frank B. Wilderson III, selections from RED, WHITE, AND BLACK
Patrice Douglass, selections from ENGENDERING BLACKNESS
Gil Anidjar, ON THE SOVEREIGNTY OF MOTHERS: THE POLITICAL AS MATERNAL
Thomas Jefferson, selections from NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA
Nahum Chandler, selections from X: THE PROBLEM OF THE NEGRO AS A PROBLEM FOR THOUGHT
Saidiya Hartman, selections from SCENES OF SUBJECTION
Colin Dayan, selections from THE LAW IS A WHITE DOG
Hortense Spillers, selections from BLACK, WHITE, AND IN COLOR
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Examinations and Assignments:
Two short papers, an experimental assignment with a legal case, final research-based essay. |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
The course contributes to the following English major requirements:
American Literature, Literary History 3, Theory, elective |
| Instructor(s): Ellis Neyra,Ren Times: ...W... 01:20PM-04:10PM; Location: TBA |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 15 | | SR major: 3 | JR major: 3 | | |
| Seats Available: 15 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 2 | JR non-major: 3 | SO: 4 | FR: 0 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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