HIST 369
The Carceral State Spring 2018
Division II Exploring Diversity Initiative
Cross-listed AFR 361
This is not the current course catalog

This seminar will examine the rise and character of the “carceral state,” a term scholars use to denote “the vast apparatus of punishment and control tat exists in the contemporary United States.” We will begin with systems of policing, processing, and punishment that came under criticism in the 1960s from civil rights advocates, simultaneous with the rise of “law and order” politics. The middle of the course will trace out how in the aftermath of civil rights reform, conservatives and liberals together paved the way for the expansion of punitive capacities at the local, state, and federal level. We will pay particular attention the uneven development of mass incarceration across states and localities, and the different patterns of racial disparity that this produced. Finally, we will look at the effects of the carceral state on American society and politics, and the movements to dismantle it.