Admission requirements
This course is only available for students in the BA International Studies programme.
The number of participants is limited to 24.
Please note that passing a Thematic Seminar (10 EC) in the second year, second semester, is an entry requirement for starting your thesis in academic year 2024-2025. You need to have passed a minimum of 100 curricular EC of the International Studies programme as well in order to start your thesis.
Description
Law, literature, and art have historically been concerned with questions of justice, often illuminating the intricate moral, social, and political dimensions that often transcend the strict boundaries of the legal domain. While the law proclaims equality for all, our individual perceptions of right and wrong, justice and unjustice may differ. Thus, conflict and struggle are inherent outcomes of any legal system, or nomos.
Individual struggles for rights and the demand for legal recognition raise profound questions: Who or what lies outside the law’s reach, remains forgotten by it, or even stands above it? These elements belong to the realm of paranomos –a universe not simply defined as “illegal” or “lawless,” but as law’s constitutive other, or essential counterpart.
In this course, we will explore how art and fiction wield a paranomic force, sharing a crucial similarity with the law: Both legal texts and artistic works are objects whose reality and meaning must be established through interpretive acts. Consequently, they become sources of social and cultural meaning, capable of questioning legal authority and advocating for more just laws.
Each session will focus on a legal concept or case paired with a work of art or literature to explore the relation between law and literature, justice and crime, legality and illegality. Our journey will traverse from ancient Greece to post-apartheid South-Africa, tackling issues such as human rights, equality, violence, fairness, truth, sovereignty, and retribution.
Course objectives
The Thematic Seminars for International Studies are designed to teach students how to deal with state-of-the-art literature and research questions and enhance the students’ learning experience by building on the multidisciplinary perspectives they have developed so far, and introducing them further to the art of academic research. The Thematic Seminrs are characterised by an international or comparative approach.
Academic skills that are trained include:
Oral and written presentation skills:
1. To explain clear and substantiated research results.
2. To provide an answer to questions concerning (a subject) in the field covered by the course:
in the form of a clear and well-structured oral presentation;
in agreement with the appropriate disciplinary criteria;
using up-to-date presentation techniques;
using relevant illustration or multimedia techniques;
aimed at a specific audience.
3. To actively participate in a discussion
Collaboration skills:
1. To provide and receive constructive criticism, and incorporate justified criticism by revising one’s own position.
2. To adhere to agreed schedules and priorities.
Basic research skills, including heuristic skills:
1. To collect and select academic literature using traditional and digital methods and techniques.
2. To analyse and assess this literature with regard to quality and reliability.
3. To formulate on this basis a sound research question.
4. To design under supervision a research plan of limited scope, and implement it using the methods and techniques that are appropriate within the discipline involved.
5. To formulate a substantiated conclusion.
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
Seminars
Seminars are held every week, with the exception of the Midterm Exam week. This includes supervised research.
Students are expected to be present and participate in the course; failure to do so may result in disenrollment from the course.
Assessment method
Assessment and Weighing
| Partial grade | Weighing |
|---|---|
| Oral presentation | 10% |
| Active participation | 10% |
| Midterm paper (preparation final paper) | 30% |
| Final Research Essay (+/- 5,000 words, excluding tables and bibliography) | 50% |
End Grade
To successfully complete the course, please take note that the End Grade of the course is established by determining the weighted average of all assessment components.
Resit
Students who score an overall insufficient grade for the course, are allowed resubmit a reworked version of the Final Essay. The deadline for resubmission is 10 working days after receiving the grade for the Final Research Essay and subsequent feedback.
In case of resubmission of the Final Research Essay the final grade for the Essay will be lowered as a consequence of the longer process of completion.
Students who fail to hand in their final essay on or before the original deadline, but still within 5 working days of that deadline, will receive a grade and feedback on their essay. This will be considered a first submission of the final essay, however, the grade will be lowered as a consequence of the longer process of completion.
Students who fail to hand in their final essay on or before the original deadline, and also fail to hand in their essay within 5 working days of that deadline, get 10 working days, counting from the original deadline, to hand in the first version of their final essay. However, this first version counts as a resubmitted essay with consequential lowering of the grade, and there will be no option of handing in a reworked version based on feedback from the lecturer.
Retaking a passing grade
Retaking a passing grade is not possible for this course.
Please consult the Course and Examination Regulations 2024 – 2025.
Exam review and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organised.
Reading list
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (trans. W.D. Ross). Kitchener: Batoche Books, 1999. Book V. https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/aristotle/Ethics.pdf
Thomas Aquinas, from Summa Theologica II, ‘Questions 90-96’. http://www.sophia-project.org/uploads/1/3/9/5/13955288/aquinas_law.pdf
Hannah Arendt, ““Epilogue” and “Postscript” to Eichmann in Jerusalem; “Holes of Oblivion.” The Portable Hannah Arendt, ed. Peter Baehr. London & New York: Penguin, 2000. 365-390.
Alain de Benoist, ‘What is sovereignty?’ http://www2.congreso.gob.pe/sicr/cendocbib/con2_uibd.nsf/A20317BBCECF9E1E0525770A00586F60/$FILE/what.pdf
Stephen Best, ‘The Slave’s Two Bodies.’ The Fugitive’s Properties. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004. 1-25.
Bolaño, Roberto, Distant Star. (Trans. Chris Andrews). New York: New Directions, 2004.
Judith Butler, “Violence, Mourning, Politics.” Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso, 2004. 19-49.
Carmichael, Stokely, Black Power at UC Berkeley, 1966. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFFWTsUqEaY
Robert Cover, “Violence and the Word.” The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 95 (1986): 1601-1629. https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3687&context=fss_papers
“Nomos and Narrative.” Harvard Law Review, 97: 1 (1983): 4-71. (excerpts: 4-25 & 44-53). https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3690&context=fss_papers
Darwish, Mahmoud. Mural. Trans. Rema Hammami & John Berger. London/ New York: Verso Books, 2017.
Davis, Angela Y. “On Palestine, G4S, and the Prison Industrial Complex,” Freedom is a Constant Struggle. Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement. Chicago: Haymarket Books: 2016.
Jacques Derrida, “Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority’” Acts of Religion. New York: Routledge, 2002. 230-258.
Frantz Fanon, “On Violence,” The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 2004. 1-62.
Michel Foucault, “Lecture Two – 15 January 1975.” Abnormal. London: Verso, 2003 31-54.
Gourgouris, Stathis, “Enlightenment and Paranomia.” Violence, Identity, and Self-Determination (ed. Hent de Vries and Samuel Weber). Standford: Standford University Press, 1997. 119-149.
Kelsen, Hans, “What is Justice?: Justice, Law and Politics. The Mirror of Science - Collected Essays. Berkeley – Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1960 Or watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akh1Xci1HY0
Kleist, Heinrich v. Michael Koolhaas, 1810. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Michael_Kohlhaas
Julia Kristeva, “Forgiveness: An Interview.” PMLA, vol. 117, no. 2 (2002). 278-295.
Antjie Krog, Country of My Skull. Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa. London: Random House, 1998.
Morris, Erol. The Thin Blue Line. Miramax Films, 1988.
Olsson, Göran, Concerning Violence. Films Boutique, 2014.
Plato. The Apology (trans. Benjamin Jowett). http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/apology.html
Said, Edward. “States,” After the Last Sky – Palestinian Lives, Photographs by Jean Mohr. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999: pp. 11-49.
Scott, Ridley, Blade Runner, Warner Bros. 1982.
Peter Singer, ‘All Animals are Equal’. In: Tom Regan & Peter Singer (eds.), Animal Rights and Human Obligations. New Jersey, 1989, pp. 148-162.
Schlink, Berhard, The Reader. (Trans. Carol Brown). New York: Vintage/ Random House, 1998. OR: Stephen Daldry, The Reader. The Weinstein Company, 2008.
Sophocles, Antigone. 442 BC. https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/files/content/docs/SOPHOCLES_ANTIGONE_(AS08).PDF
“The Book of Job” The Bible. https://biblescripture.net/Job.html.
Additionally, the students will work through:
- W.C. Booth et al., The Craft of Research, fourth edition, Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Registration
Registration occurs via survey only. Registration opens 13 December 2024:
- On 13 December 2024 you will receive a message with a link to the survey.
- Indicate there which are your 5 preferred Thematic Seminars, in order of preference.
- Based on preferences indicated by 6 January 2025 the course Coordinator will assign you to one specific Thematic Seminar by 20 January 2025.
- Students will then be enrolled for the specific groups by the Administration Office.
Students cannot register in uSis for the Thematic Seminar courses, or be allowed into a Thematic Seminar course in any other way.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Student Affairs Office for BA International Studies
Remarks
The deadline for submission of the Final Essay is Friday 6 June 2025.