SOC 16
The Lives of Infamous Men Winter 2023

Michel Foucault is famous for his analysis of how power and knowledge are interwoven in institutions such as the prison or the clinic. Less well known are the life stories that Foucault exhumed from the archives of these institutions. These stories, such as that of a parricidal peasant assumed to be insane and an intersex individual raised in a convent but later legally identified as a man, provoke questions about the self, identity, knowledge, power, and resistance. We will explore the violence done to lives when they are made to conform to the neatness of the archive and ask how we might do justice to these lives as historians. This class will include a research project in which students will collaborate to curate a biographical exhibit in the Williams Library.