Seminar - 3 hours. This seminar considers rural manifestations of various legal, social and economic phenomena. We survey various subfields of legal study, e.g., criminal justice, poverty, environment and land use, local government, family, constitutional, agricultural, access to justice, as they relate to the rural-urban continuum. We debate rurality as an aspect of identity and consider its intersections with race, gender, sexuality, (dis)ability and other identity variables.
Our multi-disciplinary approach features scholarly literature in law, rural sociology, geography, and other fields. Readings also include reports from reputable media sources, and we view and discuss excerpts from movie and television programs depicting rural people and places. We consider various aspects of rural-urban difference, along with the challenges of getting law-makers and policy-makers to attend to these differences. All these tools are used to debate current events that have particular implications for rural people and places, e.g., Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, deaths of despair, abortion restrictions, and work requirements for public benefits.
Please note: students who have already taken the White Working Class and the Law Seminar are not eligible to take this course.
Final Assessment: Students may choose Final Paper or series of short papers.
Classroom Policies: This course has a no-laptop policy.
Grading Mode: Letter grading.
Graduation Requirements: May meet Advanced Writing Requirement with the instructor's permission.
Graduation Requirements: Satisfies the Bias, Antiracism and Cultural-Competency requirement.