What’s the relationship between literature and law? Does justice mean the same thing in literary studies as it does in a legal context? Can works of literature transform the law and bring about justice? Join Professor Rose Casey to think about these big questions and why they matter.
Casey will draw from her award-winning new book, "Aesthetic Impropriety: Property Law and Postcolonial Style," to argue that literary works can generate anti-colonial legal reforms. In an unusual reading of Zoë Wicomb’s novel "David’s Story" (2000), Casey argues that this South African novel is not just about its obvious context, apartheid, but also about intellectual property laws. "David’s Story" obsessively shows how Indigenous and racially minoritized women’s stories are stolen under the existing legal regime. But Wicomb’s experimental style demonstrates how these voices could and should be respected: by allowing for intellectual property law to protect works that are collaborative, oral, or intergenerational. Aesthetically, in other words, Wicomb both critiques and reworks South African intellectual property law — and she does so nearly twenty years before South Africa finally passed a similar law, the Indigenous Knowledge Protections Act (2019). In our present moment, faced with ever-increasing attacks on the humanities in all manner of forms, "David’s Story" usefully demonstrates that literature has real-world effects.
Rose Casey is an associate professor of English at West Virginia University where she is the director of undergraduate studies for the Department of English and works with Ph.D. students on dissertation committees.
Please join us in the Community Foundation Theater, located in Gund Gallery, on Wednesday, Nov. 5, at 4:30 p.m.