Introductory Topics in Legal Studies (276-0-2)
Topic
Law and Popular Culture
Instructors
Jesse Yeh
620 Lincoln Street
Jesse Yeh (he /they)
I am an Assistant Professor of Instruction at the Center for Legal Studies. I am a political sociologist with a focus on race and immigration, law and crime, gender and sexuality, and movements and politics. My current book project Crime Is Other People: Punitive Consciousness and the Racial Politics of Law-and-Order explores how liberal and conservative activists make sense of law-and-order politics. I teach courses on research methods, immigration, and race, law, and politics.
Meeting Info
Annenberg Hall G32: Mon, Wed 3:30PM - 4:50PM
Overview of class
From superhero movies, daytime court shows, and true crime podcasts, "the law" is everywhere in our popular culture, even when we don't see it. In this course, we explore three interrelated questions: 1) how do people think about the law in their everyday life? 2) how does the law shape the production of popular cultures? and 3) how is the law represented in our popular cultures? This class focuses upon building the conceptual foundation and analytical tools for students to answer these questions for themselves.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this course, student should be able to:
- Articulate different scholarly approaches to the study of law and culture
- Utilize a meaning-making approach to understand the place of law in the social world
- Situate cultural production in the larger political economic context
- Conduct textual analysis of cultural texts
Teaching Method
Mix of lecture, seminar discussion, and other interactive exercise
Evaluation Method
Written assignments
Class Materials (Required)
All readings will be available via the course Canvas