Intersections of Law and Culture

An inter-disciplinary, international collection that examines the mutual influences between law and culture through a series of sophisticated case studies showing how cultural phenomena are brought under legal regulation, how laws are resisted through cultural practices, and how those practices shape the way in which law is understood and applied.

PRISKA GISLER is Director of Research at the Y Institute for Transdisciplinarity, Berne University of the Arts, Switzerland. SARA STEINERT BORELLA and CAROLINE WIEDMER are both Professors of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at Franklin College, Switzerland.

Introduction: P.Gisler, S.S.Borella & C.Wiedmer
PART I: THE CODIFICATION OF CULTURE
Law as Gendered Narratives: Criminal Court Decisions against Left Wing Terrorists; D.Grisard

Every Picture Speaks a Thousand Words: Visualizing Judicial Authority in the Press; L.Moran

I Hereby Find you Guilty of Cheating: How Television Judges Give Personal Problems Legal Dimensions; A.Krakus

Female Genital Cutting, Migration and the Art of Legal Boundary Maintenance; C.Wiedmer

PART II: PERFORMING RESISTANCE
The Actant Doesn't Speak: Configuring a Law for Research on Humans; P.Gisler

Giù le mani dalla mia storia: Performing Regional Identity Politics in Ticino; S.S.Borella

'That's Life:' Actualizing the Non Lieu as Empty Space; F.Ferrari

PART III: SHIFTING EPISTEMOLOGIES
'On the Study Methods of our Time:' Methodologies of Law and Literature in the Context of Interdisciplinary Studies; J.Gaakeer

The Reader as Thought Experiment: Character, Moral Luck and the Contingent; M.Williams

Between the Rational and the Marvellous: Edgar Allan Poe and the Counter-Enlightenment Origins of the Modern Detective Story; N.Sargent

Law's Life on the Screen; R.Sherwin