Race, Law and Literature , Wake Forest University

The course will survey a range of American literature with a focus on works by African-American writers from ante-Bellum to the present. Students will juxtapose legal developments in the history of race relations in the U.S. from slavery, through the civil rights amendments to the Constitution, the black codes, Jim Crow, Harlem Renaissance, civil rights era, to the present. The course marries skills developed in law school with critical readings of literature and film to better understand the context of legal issues that might be encounter. 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.