Why do people sue when they could kill? Why do governments sometimes insist on trials whose conclusions are foreordained?
We will study a number of trials and/or governmental inquiries
from the classical and medieval period (Socrates, Rabirius, Perpetua,
and St. Joan) as well as analytical models (e.g., Todd, Turner,
Cohen) for the role of litigation in western culture. We will
consider the following questions: 1) what role does litigation play
in both generating and containing a critique of dominant ideology; 2)
what interpretative problems does the rhetorical nature of our
sources pose for historical analysis of these trials; 3) what
rhetorical strategies have the actors in our trials deployed to
fashion an identity in opposition to their communities; 4) why did
these strategies usually fail in the particular trial but succeed in
subsequent historical memory? The course is open to first years. All
materials will be studied in translation.
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Course Description |
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