Lenora Ledwon

Lenora P. Ledwon

Professor of Law

Email: lledwon@stu.edu

Phone: 305.623.2345

Mail:

St. Thomas University College of Law
Faculty Suite (209)
16401 NW 37th Ave
Miami Gardens, FL 33054


Education:

B.A., Oakland University, magna cum laude
M.A., Oakland University
J.D., University of Michigan
Ph.D., University of Notre Dame, highest honors


Expertise:

Evidence
Law and Literature
Law and Popular Culture

Lenora P. Ledwon

After graduating from law school at the University of Michigan, Lenora Ledwon specialized in civil litigation and labor law at the firm of Clark, Klein and Beaumont in Detroit, Michigan. She then returned to academia and received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Notre Dame. After teaching Legal Writing at Mercer Law School, she moved to St. Thomas, where she teaches courses including Law & Literature, Legal Storytelling and Persuasion, Contracts, and Evidence. Her book, Law and Literature: Text and Theory, surveys the theoretical perspectives that inform the relationship between law and literature and illustrates the importance of narrative in shaping our understanding of law. She also has written articles for such journals as: Harvard Women’s Law Journal; Yale Journal of Law and Feminism; Temple Law Review; Rutgers’ Women’s Rights Law Reporter; Literature/Film Quarterly; Studies in Law, Politics, and Society; and American Indian Quarterly. She is co-editor of Law and Popular Culture, a casebook for Lexis Publishing.

Scholarship & Research

Scholarship

Books:

David Ray Papke, Christine Corcos, Lenora Ledwon, et. al., Law and Popular Culture: Text, Notes, and Questions, 2nd ed. (2012, LexisNexis) (Previous edition: 2007).

Lenora Ledwon, Law and Literature: Text and Theory (1996, Garland Publishing).

Book Chapters:

Lenora Ledwon, The Top Ten Law & Literature Texts You Haven’t Read, in Teaching Law and Literature (Austin Sarat, Cathrine O. Frank and Matthew Anderson, eds., 2011, Modern Language Association).

Lenora Ledwon, Harry Potter Goes to Law School, in The Law and Harry Potter 275 (Jeffrey E. Thomas and Franklin G. Snyder, eds., 2010, Carolina Academic Press).

Lenora Ledwon, Zoot Suit (1981): Realism, Romance and the Anti-Musical– Film as Social Justice, in Screening Justice-The Cinema of Law: Significant Films of Law, Order and Social Justice (Rennard Strickland, Teree E. Foster & Taunya Lovell Banks eds., 2006, W.S. Hein).

Lenora Ledwon, Outrageous Virtue and the Spectacle of Prostitution: Dracula and the Contagious Diseases Acts, in The Eyes of Justice: Seventh Round Table on Law and Semiotics (Roberta Kevelson, ed., 1994, P. Lang).

Articles:

Lenora Ledwon, Green Visual Rhetoric: The Human/Nonhuman Connection in “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind”, 7(1) J. Animal & Env. L. 1 (2015).

Lenora Ledwon, Understanding Visual Metaphors: What Graphic Novels Can Teach Lawyers About Visual Storytelling, 63 Drake Law Rev. 193 (2015)

Lenora Ledwon, Using Mel Brooks’s The Twelve Chairs to Teach Dying Declarations, Circuit, February 17, 2012. California Law Review

Lenora Ledwon, The Socratic Screenplay: Law Allegory and Science Fiction in John and Joyce Corrington’s Screenplays for ‘The Omega Man’ and ‘Battle for the Planet of the Apes’, 32 Stud. L. Pol. & Soc’y 79 (2004).

Lenora Ledwon, The Poetics of Evidence: Some Applications From Law & Literature, 21 QLR 1145 (2003). HeinOnline

Lenora Ledwon, Common Sense, Contracts, and Law and Literature: Why Lawyers Should Read Henry James, 16 Touro L. Rev. 1065 (2000). HeinOnline

Lenora Ledwon, Diaries and Hearsay: Gender, Selfhood, and the Trustworthiness of Narrative Structure, 73 Temp. L. Rev. 1185 (2000). HeinOnline

Lenora Ledwon, Melodrama and Law: Feminizing the Juridical Gaze, 21 Harv. Women’s L.J. 141 (1998). HeinOnline

Lenora Ledwon, Maternity as a Legal Fiction: Infanticide and Sir Walter Scott’s “The Heart of Midlothian”, 18 Women’s Rts. L. Rep. 1 (1996). HeinOnline

Lenora Ledwon, Native American Life Stories and “Authorship”: Legal and Ethical Issues, 9 St. Thomas L. Rev. 69 (1996) Reprinted at 21 Am. Indian Q. 579 (1997). HeinOnline

Lenora Ledwon, Veiled Women and the Law of Coverture in Collin’s “The Woman in White”, 22 Victorian Literature & Culture 1 (1995).

Lenora Ledwon, “Twin Peaks” and the Television Gothic, 21 Literature/Film Q. 260 (1993).

Lenora Ledwon, The Passion of the Phallus in Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve, 5 J. Fantastic in the Arts 26 (1993).

Lenora Ledwon, Darwin’s Ghosts: The Influence of Darwinism on the Nineteenth-Century Ghost Story, 6 Proteus 10 (1989).

Book Reviews:

Lenora Ledwon, Storytelling and Contracts, 13 Yale J.L. & Feminism 117 (2000) (book review) (reviewing Amy Hilsman Kately et al., Contracting Law (2d ed. 2000)). HeinOnline

Lenora Ledwon, Strong Representations: Narrative and Circumstantial Evidence in England by Alexander Welsh, 19 Nineteenth-Century Contexts 106 (1993) (book review).

Lenora Ledwon, Robert Polhemus, Erotic Faith: Being in Love From Jane Austen to D.H. Lawrence, 23 Religion & Literature 123 (1991) (book review).

Lenora Ledwon, The Religious Dimension of Jane Austen’s Novels by Gene Koppel, 21 Religion & Literature 105 (1989) (book review).

Courses
  • Law, Literature, and Pop Culture
  • Legal Storytelling and Persuasion
  • Evidence
News & Activities

STU Law News

Professor Ledwon Speaks at CFAH Conference at Marquette University
Professor Lenora Ledwon was an invited speaker at the Center for the Advancement of the Humanities Conference, “Urban Spaces, Creative Places: A Blueprint for the Humanities in the City” at Marquette University on February 14th, 2020