Sociology GL3685 POPULAR TRIALS

This course focuses on popular trials- or judicial proceedings that engage the interest of a general audience usually sustained by some form of mass communication. Such trials- whether or not they result in establishing new legal norms- are public events that can serve as cultural reference points for beliefs that unite or divide the community. To analyze these events, we will draw upon works in cultural studies and interpretive sociology to look at trials as social enactments that make use of ritual and dramaturgy to achieve their effects. Popular trials will also be approached from the vantage point of communication studies and critical semiotics to show how these events filter experience and how they generate representations of social reality that in turn become the focus of intense public debate and discussion.

Concepts developed in the course will be applied to specific trials each of which will be  looked at in historical context and in relation to the legal culture of the period. We will look at these trials variously in terms of their social representations, their use of ritual and dramaturgy, their narratives, and their use of competing discourses