Law and Literature Weekend Seminar: The Nickel Boys

Law and Literature Weekend Seminar

The Nickel Boys

October 3-4, 2025

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The Law and Literature Weekend Seminar is a beloved tradition at Washington and Lee, showcasing the liberal arts by bringing together faculty and participants to study a work of literature from legal, ethical, and literary perspectives. Our 32nd program will center on “The Nickel Boys” (2019), a novel by Colson Whitehead recognized with the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Kirkus Prize, and the Orwell Prize for political fiction.

Whitehead is a New York Times best-selling author. His previous acclaimed novels include his debut novel, “The Intuitionist” (2000), a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel; “The Underground Railroad” (2016), which won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction; and “Harlem Shuffle” (2021), the first book in his Harlem trilogy. Whitehead has received numerous awards including a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and in 2020, the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.

“The Nickel Boys” follows Elwood Curtis, a Black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, Florida, who is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, where he and the other “Nickel boys” endure cruelty, abuse, and neglect at the hands of the academy’s employees. The novel raises issues related to wrongful convictions, Jim Crow laws, and civil rights movements in the South and is inspired by the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida, which operated for 111 years and dramatically impacted the lives of thousands of children. The U.S. Department of Justice investigated the Dozier School in 2010 and found many unconstitutional practices, including failure to provide due process and to protect youth from harm. In response, the Florida Legislature established a victim compensation program for people who attended the Dozier School and were abused.

Allison Weiss, professor of practice, will lead us on this intellectual journey. Weiss teaches legal writing and prison litigation in W&L’s School of Law. She will be joined by a team of distinguished faculty.

“The book is really moving, and many parts of the novel remind me of the clients we represent in the Parole Advocacy Practicum,” Weiss said. “The incomprehensible rules, near impossibility to get out, and cruelty are prominent features in the Virginia Department of Corrections, too.”

This program is open to everyone interested in literature — you do not need to be an attorney to attend.

Program Cost: $275 per person

Allison Weiss

Allison Weiss

Allison Weiss, Professor of Practice, W&L Law