Course Information

796.20 - Critical Race Narrative

Professor: Vincene Verdun
Credits: 3
Semester: 2009 Summer

Second Writing Requirement? Yes
Seminar? Yes
Professional Responsibility? No
Prerequisites: None
Special Notes: This seminar meets on the University's Summer Quarter Calendar.

Course Description

This seminar will focus on the relationship between narrative and law by using critical race theory and feminist legal theory to examine how race in America is a narrative of property and power. By reading a number of essayists and several novelists, we will explore such questions as: Who owns the narrative of slavery? Who can tell whose story? How has the law served as a totalizing presence in the lives of people of color? How do contemporary African American  scholars, and other Scholars of Color (Critical Race Theorists) challenge concepts such as “property,” “witness,” “evidence,” “white innocence”? All of the novels that we will read will have as their genesis or focal point issues of law. All of our legal theorists assume that “wherever there is law, there is narrative.”

The course materials listed above are for informational purposes only and should not be considered final. Students must check with the Registrar for a current list of closed courses.