Society’s moral demands can sometimes conflict with an individual’s principles or desires. Some of the characters in the works we’ll study choose to dismiss the rules and ideals of their society, while others suffocate within the socioeconomic, moral, and racial restrictions society places on them. We will examine, among other things, the relationship between law and morality and how a society maintains order. We’ll discuss how people define “right” and “wrong” and why people choose one or the other. In addition to Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Russian classic, Crime and Punishment, we’ll read Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys, and we’ll consider psychological theory and philosophy in relation to the characters upon whom we focus and the role that race and class play in determining our view of criminality.
Assignments and assessment will consist of papers, research projects, creative writing, presentations, nightly observations on reading, and a final paper. This course satisfies the requirements for pre-20th century literature and for world literature.
Western Law, Russian Justice by 
A History of Russian Literature by 
The Positive Hero in Russian Literature by 
Lectures on Russian Literature by 
