The Open Classroom Initiative

So what exactly am I trying to do with the blog's new direction? What am I trying to accomplish by bringing my students and my external readers together through this medium? The class's blog-based assignments and twitter requirements aren't just fun for the sake of fun, or novelty for the sake of novelty. They are components of my rookie effort at what I am calling the Open Classroom Initiative (which sounds, I suppose, either a little grandiose or too much like the title of a Big Bang Theory episode, but c'est la vie).

It starts with the material for this semester's class: Law, Culture, and Identity. We're tackling the ways that our different cultures, groups, and individual identities change the way that we understand and interact with laws, rules, and norms. While this is my field of study, that doesn't change the fact that I'm only one person with one set of experiences, and the same goes for each student in the classroom. Between the 49 of us in there, we should be able to bring a pretty wide variety of perspectives and backgrounds to the table, but this is a situation where more and different is likely better. I wanted to give more people, from more geographic regions and walks of life, with a wider panoply of demographic backgrounds, etc., etc., a way to bring their perspectives to our classroom as well. My hope here is that the blog can be a space for conversation about law and culture between those of us who are in the classroom and those of you who are participating digitally here. 

Similarly, while I have confidence in my own teaching ability, the fact that I'm only one person limits what I can think of to do in the classroom. Some of the best lessons I've ever taught were the product of collaborative brainstorming and planning with other teachers, and I don't do anyone any favors by thinking I have to come up with everything myself all the time. If others have ideas that I think are creative and pedagogically sound, I should use them when I can. To that end, I will occasionally ask on here for input on a topic, either for stories that illustrate it, materials that support it, or activities that can demonstrate it. For example, I will be giving a special Halloween lecture on the role of "the trickster" in literature as way of looking at law as a game. We'll be reading "The Devil and Daniel Webster," and Rumplestiltskin is a fun example of a "bad" character who uses convoluted contractual language to get what he wants, but there are tons of representations of the Devil and other "tricksters," and I'm about five weeks from asking you, blog readers, for your favorite examples. 

The mirror image of this is that I have, off and on for a few years now, given you my thoughts on various aspects of law and society. Again, this is a field in which I am well-versed, but - with the exception of two guest posts - it's only been my thoughts driving this blog. No more. I'm enlisting my students in the quest to ask questions about the ways laws, rules, and norms guide our behavior - and how our behavior changes them. Inevitably, my students' talent, insight, and varied experiences will bring to the table perspectives that I never could have, and this blog will be a place to share them with the wider world. I think we all write better when we think our writing will be seen by a more diverse audience than simply our professors and GSIs, and I've often been frustrated over the years that I was the only one who got to see the wonderful ideas my students have had. But again - no more. Now they will have the wider audience they deserve and will hopefully be motivated by writing for it. 

I'll end this explanation/manifesto by asking all of you - whether student or outside reader - to get others involved in this who you think will enjoy what we're doing. Parents, siblings, children, co-workers, friends, strangers on the subway, whomever. If you think they'll enjoy joining in the fun we're going to have doing this together, get the on the site (and have them follow @lawallover on twitter!) to get in the game. In this case, it is not only the more the merrier, but the more the more intellectually interesting. Let's get to it. 

Law, Culture, and Identity Syllabus! Follow the Action!

In the spirit of making this semester's course a collaborative experience and opening the classroom to suggestions from the wider world, I attached a link below so you can download the syllabus to follow the action from home. Here's the opening blurb, to get you excited:

It can be tempting to think of law-breaking and obedience as either/or propositions. I suppose there is some truth to this — our criminal system is, after all, predicated on a jury’s ability to say whether something happened or not, and whether someone was responsible or not — but thinking about law in black and white terms obscures the complexities imposed on it by the cultures that surround it. Who we think we are affects our relationships with rules, laws, and norms, and the groups with which we identify mould our reactions to those constraints. Socially ascribed attributes and roles influence our perceptions of the law, and organizations influence both identity and the implementation of law. These are just of a few of of the intersections between law, culture, and identity that motivate this course. 

This class, to steal a phrase from William Ian Miller, is “methodologically promiscuous as a matter of methodological commitment.” We’re after myriad ways that who we (think we) are and the groups to which we (think we) belong change the ways we think about and react to law, and — while we will explore many approaches from within the public law/law and society literatures — we will sample rather liberally from psychology, sociology, literary criticism, and film. Law, it turns out, is everywhere, so we will look for it everywhere.

Link: Law, Culture, and Identity Syllabus

The Return of the Blog!

Welcome back readers, and welcome students! Law All Over is back, with an exciting new twist for what I think will be a fascinating semester ahead. For those of you who are new to this, a quick explanation of what this blog is about:

Law All Over seeks to examine the ways that laws, rules, and informal norms purport to govern our daily lives and how who we think we are affects the ways we interpret and (mis)understand those rules, and our tendencies to follow or break them. 

That's it in a nutshell. For about two years, I wrote posts looking at various situations and exploring their sometimes hidden socio-legal dimensions (with some excellent help from a few guest bloggers), and collected links on happenings in the legal world. While these features will return, I'm excited to introduce a few changes that I think will make this even more fun and more interesting. 

Change #1: While I will still post on occasion on law and society, I'm going to be posting more often on teaching law and society. I'm teaching a newly authored course this semester, "Law, Culture, and Identity," and will use this space to reflect on my pedagogical approaches, curricular choices, and solicit suggestions for in-class activities. My dream is to make this class a space for intellectual collaboration between not just my students and myself, but between the class and the blogosphere. 

Change #2: There will be far more frequent guest posts because all of my students' writing assignments will be short examinations of law and society topics and - with their permission, of course - I will post them once a week or so on here. The blog will have a far wider authorship this term, and that will only increase the intellectual creativity on the site. With their posts and comments (of which there will be many), this will be a far more participatory site - I hope the rest of you will join in the fun too!

So here's to a more pedagogically curious, collaborative, and fun semester on Law All Over! I'm excited to be back and I'm looking forward to seeing how this new idea grows.

Special Welcome to the Students of Political Science 389: Law, Culture, and Identity

Welcome to 389's digital home away from home! This will be the site where some of your papers are put up as blogposts, and where you will comment on your classmates' work. You are obviously encouraged to peruse my past posts to get a feel for the blog, but your content will stem from the course material. As I've said, we're going to have fun in this course, but it will be intellectually serious fun and always, ALWAYS remember that this is a public space. Others will be able to read anything we post here, so make sure that - whether it's a post or a comment - it reflects your best work and hews to the appropriate boundaries for public discourse. 

It's going to be a great semester; I'm excited to get started!