Mass incarceration, police brutality, torture, and botched executions raise questions about the violence of the law: Must the law be violent to control violence? Does the law’s violence promote justice or disrupt it? How are law and punishment portrayed in literature, media, and art? We will analyze theory, literature, and visual imagery of the law’s violence ranging from Supreme Court Cases to Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan to photographs from Ferguson, Missouri.

“Springes to catch woodcocks…”  This course will examine three of Shakespeare’s plays (a comedy, a tragedy, and a history) through the lens of authenticity and identity. Shakespeare lived in a time when it was crucial to put forth the right image in order to profit socially, politically, and materially, so late Elizabethans and early Stuarts were often torn between competing needs to protect and display themselves. Our current social media culture requires a similar crafting of public identity. This course will consider the ways that Shakespeare’s plays still speak to the ethics of authenticity. We will actively engage with Shakespeare through new media (data-mining and infographics) as well as through an aesthetic approach (film adaptations and book art).