Carceral Disability Studies: The Case of the Philippines

Graduate / Professional

This seminar examines the racial, ethical, political, environmental, and social implications of the penal colonization process in the Philippines through the lens of disability studies. Carceral disability studies is in great need of exploration and that is the aim of this seminar. We analyze archival documents (manuscripts) from the Philippines and engage with theoretical and historical texts on disability, prison labor, racial capitalism, ecocriticism, Indigenous studies, carceral studies, gender studies, and law and the humanities. Overseas incarceration was a method employed by empires to dispose of criminals, the poor, sex workers, and vagrants. In the Philippines (a Spanish colony until 1898), the dispossession of indigenous people of their land and the implication of intensive farming were also consequences of the colonial project. We see that labor and procreation were crucial to using prisoners to build the colonial structure and strengthen the Spanish presence in the archipelago. We discover the centrality of this transnational and transhistorical approach to understanding the contemporary treatment of imprisoned people and the centrality of disability studies to understand mass incarceration today. Course in Spanish or English depending on the students enrolled. Spanish reading knowledge is mandatory. W 1:30pm-3:25pm