From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect

From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect argues for the continued vitality of Law and Literature. Traditional methods of Law and Literature are combined with work in critical media studies, affect, and cultural narratology to address topics such as ethnonationalism, anti-immigration sentiment, and systemic racism in Germany and the United States. Taking stock of the diversification of the field at fifty years, this book understands Law and Literature as a political project. It has a precedent in inaugural Law and Literature texts such as Jacob Grimm's Von der Poesie im Recht (On the Poetry in Law) from 1815/16, which imagined an alternative legal order that was grounded in the unity of law, poetic language, and feeling. The political thrust of Law and Literature continues up into the present in the arts of BlackLivesMatter, which document and resist police violence.

Law and Literature offers keys for understanding how legal identities are constructed, for analyzing how legal texts are constructed, and for comprehending how cultural-legal issues are mediated affectively. Using cultural, medial, affect theoretical, and narrative analyses of law, a revitalized Law and Literature offers a set of methods and theories with which to address the most pressing issues of the present.

Greta Olson, Professor of English and American Literary and Cultural Studies, University of Giessen

Greta Olson is Professor of English and American Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Giessen. She is a general editor of the European Journal of English Studies (EJES), and, with Jeanne Gaakeer, the co-founder of the European Network for Law and Literature. Professor Olson aims to
facilitate work on the nexus between political and artistic practice and academic analysis. She is involved in a project on "Beyond the Male Gaze: Towards Pluralistic Media Practices" with the filmmaker Lisa Friederich, and in one on the politics of images of migration.

Introduction: Expanding the Scope of Law and Literature to Unpack Cultural-Legal Issues and Their Affective Resonances
1. The Pluralization of Law and Literature
2. Law Has Gone Pop: Embracing Popular Legality
3. The Turn to Passion in Law and Literature
4. Law and Literature as Legal Pluralism
5. Why should we care about the future of Law and Literature?