Course Info

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Course Info for POLS - 377 - 01, Spring 2026
Class number: 2952 Title: Politics, Law, & Pop Culture Department: Political Science
Career: Undergraduate Component: Seminar Session: Regular
Instructor's Permission Required: No Grading Basis: Regular Units: 1.00
Enrollment limited to 19 Current enrollment: 22 Available seats: 0
Start date: Tuesday, January 20, 2026 End date: Friday, May 8, 2026 Mode of Instruction: In Person
Schedule: MW: 1:30PM-2:45PM, MC - 305 Instructor(s): Dudas, Mary
Prerequisite(s): None
Distribution Requirement: Meets Social Sciences Requirement
Note: All seats reserved for POLS majors.
Course Description:
This course is about the interaction of politics, law, and legal practice with popular culture. It is perhaps banal to observe that popular culture distorts and misrepresents law and legal practice. However, the consequences of popular culture distortions of law remain a provocative area for scholarly inquiry. Furthermore, in a democracy, where citizens make demands on government, popular culture can influence perceptions, expectations, and demands citizens make on political and legal elites. Course media will rely on film, television, and scholarly readings and will examine mythical stories of the founding of political orders based on rule of law, legal education and inequality, trials in democratic and authoritarian regimes, law and political violence, and the possibility of justice outside the rule of law and the state.