Law and Literature Seminar: Constitutional Law and Dystopian Literature, Loyola University New Orleans

Constitutional law and its application to Dystopian Literature will attempt to explore the role that the humanities play in our evolving concepts of Constitutional rights through the U.S. Constitution and its interpretation by the U.S. Supreme Court. These concepts, so central to the practice of law and the functioning of our ordered society, have complex origins based on religion, culture, economics and utilitarianism. This course will challenge students to not consider the basis of law as static or self-evident, but rather to consider the myriad origins and perspectives that color our notions or “right” and “wrong” and, more importantly, to consider the role that the arts in general, and literature in particular, play in our evolving concepts of the role government plays and the application of the U.S. Constitutional to the rights enjoyed by society. This information has been collected for the Post-Discipline Online Syllabus Database. The database explores the use of literature by schools of professional education in North America. It forms part of a larger project titled Post-Discipline: Literature, Professionalism, and the Crisis of the Humanities, led by Dr Merve Emre with the assistance of Dr Hayley G. Toth. You can find more information about the project at https://postdiscipline.english.ox.ac.uk/. Data was collected and accurate in 2021/22.