Advanced Topics in Social and Cultural Analysis (303-0-1)

Topic

Race, Crime,and Punishment: Prisons, the U.S. Mexi

Instructors

Nitasha Sharma
847/467-6589
Crowe Hall 1-127

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 3-410: Mon, Wed 12:30PM - 1:50PM

Overview of class

Is American Justice (color)blind? This interdisciplinary upper-division course examines the histories, institutions, and policies that shape broad scale systems of racialization, incarceration, and citizenship. Drawing from legal studies, first-person narratives, theories of race and other approaches, this class analyzes the ideas and practices that shape the relationships between individuals, groups, and systems of power. How do we understand different groups' experiences with crime and punishment? How does race, citizenship status, and religion affect these relations? We analyze how people negotiate institutions like the prison and the US-Mexico border, and the relationships between individual choice and broader structures. By understanding the ways that
three particular groups—African Americans, Mexicans, and Middle Easterners—are differentially racialized and criminalized, we will address the concept of "blind justice." Focusing on the institutions or systems of prisons, policing, and detention centers (and a smaller focus on criminal and immigration law), we see how various "races" actually share overlapping and linked experiences with surveillance and disciplinary action by state and non-state forces. How have certain racial groups been linked with race-specific crimes? How are particular bodies—not just actions—deemed a crime or "illegal"? What work do these linkages do, and are they rooted in reality and/or ideology?

Learning Objectives

Topics include:

• the development of particular ideologies that link certain people with certain "criminal tendencies";

• the criminalization of various actions and racialized bodies;

• various groups' experiences with the courts, policing systems, and incarceration.

This course is divided into three sections:

1) creation of "the illegal": the criminalization of Mexicans and Central Americans and the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border;

2) creation of "the criminal": the historic criminalization of Black people in the US, from enslavement to Jim Crow to the rise of mass incarceration;

3) creation of "the terrorist": the criminalization and "disappearing" of Arab, Middle Eastern, and "Muslim looking people" in post-9/11 America.

We will also examine the incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II and how this was informed by how the US contended with Native Americans; the way that certain ideas of illegality and criminality can be transferred from racial group to racial group; the impact of theories, personal narratives, and histories upon our understanding of these processes; and concepts about power and knowledge.

Class Materials (Required)

There will be a course reader.

Class Notes

Attending the first class is mandatory; if you can't make it and/or haven't contacted me beforehand and I have agreed to maintain your registration, you will be dropped for a student on the waitlist.

Class Attributes

Social and Behavioral Science Foundational Discipl
U.S. Perspectives on Power, Justice, and Equity

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: Registration is reserved to all ASIAN_AM students until the end of preregistration, after which registration will be open to all who meet the prerequisites.