Mass Movmnts Mas Incarceration

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This course looks at mass movements & mass incarceration in tandem, exploring their many contestations, confrontations, and connections. Rather than framing mass movements strictly as responses to the U.S. police State, we will consider how groups that were deemed “ungovernable” from the perspective of the State became widely criminalized through pro-white patriarchal tropes produced and perpetuated by people with economic and political power. From this perspective, widespread imprisonment appears to be the engine, and not simply the response, of the U.S. police State. Course materials are organized such that, over the duration of the semester, we will read theories, histories, ethnographies, and journalistic endeavors alongside music, television shows, and documentaries with an aim toward crafting practical tools for understanding formations of collective life and for fighting against technologies of power and punishment in U.S. society today.