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Description
This course considers deadly human violence, through the lens of the law and non-legal cultural representations, including literature and film. Students examine motivations for killing, responsibility, and the legal definitions of homicide. The course also explores killings beyond “ordinary” murder – serial killings, mass killings, and state-inflicted homicide. Students also consider society's fascination with murder, the depiction of murder in the law and culture, and how, if at all, those who kill differ from those who do not.
Texts
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote; Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; The Stranger by Albert Camus; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, and others.
From the lecture...
What makes a person responsible for their killing? What is the difference between someone who is sick and someone who is criminal? Culpability. The notion is that if a person kills because of a mental illness, he is not at fault. The label “insane” is imprecise and involves social, moral, medical, and legal considerations. Is a person bad because he is sick or because he chooses to be bad? Can someone be insane and still have the intent to kill? If a person's act was truly “involuntary,” do we have the right, as a society, to say the involuntariness is irrelevant and the person may be punished criminally nonetheless? The question of the insanity defense is a fascinating social study. People think those who are found not guilty by reason of insanity are getting away with something. But mental hospitals for the criminally insane are much like prisons, and there’s no guaranteed exit date. And with the exception of cases in which the death penalty is a possibility, there is generally little incentive to raise an insanity defense.We need to think about what we expect from the people we are leading. When you have high expectations, people tend to perform well. When you have low expectations, they tend to perform poorly. If you keep hearing you’ll never amount to anything, low and behold, you’ll never amount to anything. That’s pretty powerful stuff, but it plays out in the workplace everyday. We need to turn stereotypes around.
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