WMST 312 - Gender, Race and Punishment: Toward an Inclusive History of the American Carceral State

An interdisciplinary course that explores the complex history of the mass incarceration of African American girls and women within the U.S. penal system. Students will investigate the complexities of the U.S. carceral state while unearthing the harsh realities that Black girls and women endured as they faced a system that criminalized their race, gender, and social status. Students will further investigate the historical nature of African American girls and women’s lived experiences, both within and right outside of a criminal justice system that, in many ways, has worked to criminalized their very being. This course is meant to illustrate that African American girls and women have not had one singular experience within the criminal justice system while illustrating that their experiences differed over time and across lines of age, class, regional, organizational, and sexual orientation. Students will consider multiple issues that African American girls and women have faced while confined, both physical and mentally, by the United States penal system including their struggle for freedom, the exploitation of their labor, physical and mental abuse within the penal system, their personal practices of self-salvation, family life and love relationships, and their ongoing efforts to not only denounce the prison industrial complex while pushing for the abolition of carceral state.

Credits: 1.00
Crosslisted: ALST 312
Corequisite: None
Prerequisites: None
Major/Minor Restrictions: None
Class Restriction: None
Area of Inquiry: Social Relations, Inst.& Agents
Liberal Arts CORE: None

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