Crime and Punishment in American History

5 credits · Undergraduate

This course engages scholarship on the history of crime and punishment in America from the colonial period to the recent past. Readings consist of some theory, a handful of primary sources, and mostly secondary readings on such topics as: knowledge production about crime, discipline, and punishment; the history of prisons; carceral labor; penal reform; the relationship of institutionalized punishment to state-building and empire; the role of the illicit economy and incarceration in the making of racial capitalism; prisoners social movements; and the origins of mass incarceration.