Module LAW3205 for 2022/3
- Overview
- Aims and Learning Outcomes
- Module Content
- Indicative Reading List
- Assessment
Undergraduate Module Descriptor
LAW3205: Law, Testimony and Trauma
This module descriptor refers to the 2022/3 academic year.
Module Aims
You will take part in developing knowledge in the field by conducting your own research project on the legal response to a traumatic event that you will choose to analyse. During lectures and seminars, you will receive guidance and support in developing both socio-legal research skills and research skills specific to the academic field. Socio-legal research skills include: planning a research project; ensuring that the project addresses the research question consistently; analysing a case study from a social perspective and from a legal perspective; building a bibliography according to decolonising principles; and developing critical thinking. The academic field specific research tools include learning the foundations of the field, i.e., its theories, concepts and case studies.
On successfully completing the programme you will be able to: | |
---|---|
Module-Specific Skills | 1. Demonstrate the ability to critically examine how legal responses to traumatic events influence society. 2. Demonstrate an understanding of the elements required for a legal response to a traumatic event to be effective and empowering. |
Discipline-Specific Skills | 3. Demonstrate the ability to critically examine the significance of legal narratives, the ways by which they are created and their influence on society. 4. Demonstrate a critical understanding of how different approaches to lawyering shape legal narratives. 5. Exhibit socio-legal research skills. |
Personal and Key Skills | 6. Exhibit the ability to design an independent research project. 7. Demonstrate the ability to conduct group presentations, provide feedback and critique to your peers, and mature as a consequence of the critique and feedback you yourself receive. 8. Demonstrate an understanding of research conducted according to decolonising principles. |
Module Content
Syllabus Plan
Whilst the precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover all or some of the following topics:
• Critical, multidisciplinary perspectives of the concepts of ‘trauma’ and ‘testimony’.
• Theoretical lenses analysing the relationship between law, testimony and trauma.
• Central case studies in the field, which will include some or all the following: the Grenfell Tower fire, domestic violence, the murder of Stephen Lawrence, the Hillsborough disaster.
Lectures will be dedicated to learning the fundamentals of the law, testimony and trauma field, while seminars will be dedicated to understanding these fundamentals through work on individual research projects.
Learning and Teaching
This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | Guided independent study | Placement / study abroad |
---|---|---|
29 | 121 |
...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:
Category | Hours of study time | Description |
---|---|---|
Scheduled learning and teaching activities | 9 | 9 x 1 hour lectures |
Scheduled learning and teaching activities | 20 | 10 x 2 hour seminars |
Guided independent study | 9 | Lecture preparation |
Guided independent study | 46 | Case study preparation for seminars |
Guided independent study | 66 | Formative and summative assessments preparation |
Online Resources
This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).
How this Module is Assessed
In the tables below, you will see reference to 'ILO's. An ILO is an Intended Learning Outcome - see Aims and Learning Outcomes for details of the ILOs for this module.
Formative Assessment
A formative assessment is designed to give you feedback on your understanding of the module content but it will not count towards your mark for the module.
Form of assessment | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
---|---|---|---|
Research project outline and bibliography | 500 words + bibliography | 1-8 | Written |
Summative Assessment
A summative assessment counts towards your mark for the module. The table below tells you what percentage of your mark will come from which type of assessment.
Coursework | Written exams | Practical exams |
---|---|---|
100 | 0 | 0 |
...and this table provides further details on the summative assessments for this module.
Form of assessment | % of credit | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
---|---|---|---|---|
Essay or website | 100 | 2,500 words + bibliography | 1-8 | Written |
0 | ||||
0 | ||||
0 |
Re-assessment
Re-assessment takes place when the summative assessment has not been completed by the original deadline, and the student has been allowed to refer or defer it to a later date (this only happens following certain criteria and is always subject to exam board approval). For obvious reasons, re-assessments cannot be the same as the original assessment and so these alternatives are set. In cases where the form of assessment is the same, the content will nevertheless be different.
Original form of assessment | Form of re-assessment | ILOs re-assessed | Timescale for re-assessment |
---|---|---|---|
Essay or website | Essay or website (same as above) | 1-8 | August/September re-assessment period |
Indicative Reading List
This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.
Michel Foucault and François Ewald, “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-1976 (St Martins Press, 2003).
Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (Hachette UK, 2015).
.
Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History (Routledge, 2013).
Shoshana Felman, The Juridical Unconscious (Harvard University Press, 2002). JMonica Casper and Eric Wertheimer, Critical Trauma Studies: Understanding Violence, Conflict and Memory in Everyday Life (NYU Press, 2016).
Didier Fassin “The Humanitarian Politics of Testimony: Subjectification through Trauma in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” Cultural Anthropology 23, no. 3 (2008): 531-558
Natalie Ohana The Politics of the Production of Knowledge on Trauma: The Grenfell Tower Inquiry, Journal of Law and Society, Vol 48(4) 495-729.
Natalie Ohana “The Archaeology of the Courts’ Domestic Violence Discourse: Discourse as a Knowledge-Sustaining System,” Feminists@Law no. 9(2) 2019
Natalie Ohana Beyond Words: Breaking the Boundaries of Legal Language TEDx Talks,TedX GoodenoughCollege 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ydrf7DljfQ&feature=emb_logo.