(Offered as LJST 355 and POSC 355.) (Research Seminar)  The treatment and legal status of animals has often provided a rich resource for legal theory. Jeremy Bentham famously yoked the denial of rights to animals with pro-slavery arguments in order to argue that the basis of rights was not the shape of the body or the level of intelligence but the capacity to feel pain. Since then a considerable literature on animal rights and the nascent field of animal studies has emerged.

[formerly LJST 225] (Analytic Seminar)  The proliferation of law in film and on television has expanded the sphere of legal life itself. Law lives in images that today saturate our culture and have a power all their own, and the moving image provides a domain in which legal power operates independently of law’s formal institutions. This course will consider what happens when legal events are re-narrated in film and examine film’s treatment of legal officials, events, and institutions (e.g., police, lawyers, judges, trials, executions, prisons).

The traditional understanding of war involved the armies of two nation-states confronting each other on a battlefield. And other than general customs of a just war, the law was thought to have little to say about war. But in the last half century even as the traditional form of war has changed rapidly, as conflicts involving non-state actors (such as insurgency and terrorism) have increased, international law has developed an intricate set of rules regarding who can fight and what methods of fighting are legal.

“Nature” is at once among the most basic of concepts and among the most ambiguous. Law is often called upon to clarify the meaning of nature. In doing so it raises questions about what it means to be human.

(Offered as LJST 105 and BLST 147 [US].) Understandings of and conflicts about place are of central significance to the experience and history of race and race relations in America.

Fall and spring semester.  Members of the Department.

The authors read in LATI 441 and 442 vary from year to year, the selection being made according to the interests and needs of the students. Both 441 and 442 may be repeated for credit, providing only that the topic is not the same. In 2016-17 LATI 441 will read Seneca's Tragedies. Three class hours per week. Seminar course.  

Requisite: LATI 215 or 316 or equivalent.  Fall semester. Professor Zanker.

This course will examine Catullus’ poetic technique, as well as his place in the literary history of Rome. Extensive reading of Catullus in Latin, together with other lyric poets of Greece and Rome in English. Three class hours per week.

Requisite: LATI 202 or equivalent.  Fall semester. Visiting Professor D. Sinos.

This course prepares students to read classical Latin. No prior knowledge of Latin is required. Three class hours per week.

Fall semester. Professor van den Berg.

Full course.  Fall and spring semesters.