Group E Check-In
Group Members: Trent, Jaclyn, Asiye
What do you want to teach?
– We want to teach dehumanization in the court of law and how the stories lawyers tell inform the jury which sways their judgement.
Why do you want to share (teach) this aspect of the course with a community outside your class (why does it matter)?
– We feel it is important to share what minorities are up against when being involved with the legal system and how things are skewed against them in particular circumstances.
What is the central objective?
– To convey to the audience the insidious strategies employed by lawyers to get convictions from the jury.
Does this lesson emerge from our course discussions, readings, assignments? How so?
– Yes it emerges from our readings and discussions that are based on Emmitt Till, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. In each reading assignment we were able to see how these victims were painted as superhuman or not human at all in the most subtlest of ways. These descriptions swayed the opinions of the jury so that the real perpetrators would be found not guilty.
What materials will you use to help you teach this lesson?
– We plan on using the readings on Emmitt Till, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown along with statistics regarding incarceration rates, crime and police brutality cases and how they relate to race.
How do you plan to incorporate the graphic illustration?
– We feel that Trent’s graphic illustration goes very well with the point we’re trying to get across. Trent’s comic is a commentary on how perception influences the response. We want to tie that into how the jury’s perception of someone can influence their decision even in the midst of the facts.
So I like that you are focusing on law and the way the rhetoric of the law becomes a part of the story we tell about ourselves and others. And it becomes a story sanctioned by the power of law, government and has material consequences in the world.
I think though that you need to figure out right now how to articulate what you’re teaching in terms of the literature in the course. This isn’t a law course, so we didn’t necessarily prove these things. But you can say that some of the authors we look are interested in the way in which the language of the law structures our understanding of who is and isn’t human. Yes you have the early documents from the case, but only one of those is legal (the transcript from Darren Wilson case). The one on Emmet Brown is literary. Also I think you NEED NEED to use A Lesson Before Dying and Monster. Honestly it would seem kind of negligible if you didn’t because these texts position themselves as explicitly trying to respond to the stories the law tells. I think you could see parts of Frankenstein and The Outsiders also working in this way (Truth you could make an argument for ABC and The Bluest Eye too, but that might be a bit more work).
The more literature from the syllabus you use the stronger of a case you can make for the way literature tries to combat or at least interrogate the stories the law tells. Remember: Since this course is a literature course, the chances are you will need to articulate whatever it is you teach in terms of literature. We want to teach these students that these three novels put together ask us to think about X or Y? Then you show it, and then maybe you ask the participants to actually do the thinking that the novel asks for.