Upcoming Inside-Out Courses

Undergraduate Courses:

Winter 2026 / CRES 420 / PERSPECTIVES IN RESTORATIVE JUSTICE with Professor John Inglish

What is the nature of justice? What is restorative justice? What are its origins? What are past, current, and future applications, and where is the field headed? How does restorative justice articulate with our current criminal justice system in the U.S.? Is restorative justice an ancillary/alternative, or could it play a central role in informing how society responds to harm? This course will engage with these and many other questions as we engage in a survey of the field of restorative justice. This course focuses on philosophies, theories, and applications of restorative justice, and will focus on three distinct areas: 1) theory; 2) policy; and 3) practice. Students will explore the course content through these three lenses through reading, writing, and dialogue.

This course applies to the LAW Elective and Upper-Division requirements of the Legal Studies Minor.

The course runs approximately 6:00-7:50 on Tuesday and Thursday nights.

As of November 20, this class will be outside-only (held on campus, not in the prison). Applications for this course are currently open. Apply here. Email jinglish@uoregon.edu with any questions!

 

Winter 2026 / COLT 440/540 / EXPERIMENTAL WRITING: THE PLACE OF “THE REAL” IN A WORLD GONE MAD with Professor Dawn Marlan

What happens to literature when the world is unrecognizable? How do new experimental forms attempt to capture an altered sense of reality? We will first address these questions in the context of European Modernism, a movement often characterized by its rejection of Victorian realism. In this period, the dissolution of shared values, the liberation movements of disenfranchised populations, and the emerging sense of selfhood as unknowable and incoherent contributed to a rupture with the old world order that authoritarian movements exploited. In response, writers and artists sought new forms to represent a world that felt radically unprecedented. In this course we will study the relationship between such destabilization and the formal innovations that seek to capture it. Class-time will involve interactive exercises designed specifically for the program and small group discussions. Assignments will be both analytical and creative. We will end the course with a consideration of the madness of our current world order and practice our own experimental writing.

The course runs approximately 5:30-8:50 on Tuesday nights weeks 1-11 in winter term, plus drive-time to Oregon State Correctional Institution. Transportation will leave the Eugene campus around 4:00.

Applications for this course are currently open. Apply here. 

 

Law School Courses:

Spring 2026 / LAW 610 / MERCY AND THE RULE OF LAW with Professor Kristen Bell

Philosophers and legal scholars generally define the rule of law as a state of affairs in which law, rather than the whim of individuals, is “in charge” in a society. The first part of the class will delve into what the rule of law is, whether/why it is valuable, and what conditions are needed to maintain the rule of law. The second part of the class will focus on investigating various philosophical accounts of mercy, beginning with Seneca and continuing through contemporary work on the subject. Students will examine competing definitions of mercy, distinguish mercy from related concepts like forgiveness, and identify how mercy may be valuable. The third part of the course delves into an apparent tension between mercy and the rule of law. Mercy is often understood as giving a person less punishment than is required by law. On this understanding, a judge who grants mercy to an individual will be derogating from what the law requires. In doing so, the judge is not upholding the rule of law – rather than faithfully applying the law, the judge is taking charge and ruling according to her own will. Is respect for the rule of law inconsistent with a practice of mercy? If a society values both mercy and the rule of law, how (if at all) should mercy be incorporated into a legal system?

The course runs approximately 1:00-3:30 on Friday afternoons from 1/6 through 4/3 in at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, and 4/10 through 4/24 at the Knight Law Center.