Until recently, scholars of law and literature could assume a consensus regarding the importance of history to their interdisciplinary engagement.1 Sal Nicolazzo writes to prove this point and fends off the antihistoricism that swept literary studies in the 2010s (238–39). Her study “offers a model for how literary method can produce new histories of race, empire, law, and sovereignty” (37). It directly tackles the skepticism that scholars face from university administrators who question whether literary scholars do research at all. Nicolazzo shows that we acquire new knowledge by applying literary methods and names what she reads for: “the narrative, textual, and rhetorical practices that shaped the purview and scope of policing in the Anglo-American legal sphere long before the establishment of the modern metropolitan police force” (3).
Putting “writing” rather than literature at the center, Nicolazzo reads across textual forms: from ephemera, bureaucratic forms, and legal cases to history...
