Gender, Sexuality and The Carceral State (383-0-20)

Instructors

Abby Barefoot
847/467-0259
Abigail Barefoot is an Assistant Professor of Instruction at the Center for Legal Studies. Prof. Barefoot’s research explores questions of justice, safety, and accountability through the lens of prison abolition and critical carceral studies Abigail’s current book project Beyond Carceral Responses: Transformative Justice, Prison Abolition, and the Movement to End Sexual Violence examines transformative justice practices for sexual violence. Using an ethnographic approach, Abigail unpacks the tensions, contradictions, and possibilities of practicing transformative justice as experienced by survivors, facilitators, and people who cause harm. Her other teaching and research interests include LGBTQ Studies, American social movements, and mass incarceration.

Meeting Info

Technological Institute L160: Mon, Wed 9:30AM - 10:50AM

Overview of class

This course explores the rise of the carceral state in the United with particular attention to ethnographic, sociolegal, feminist, queer, and transgender theoretical approaches to the study of prisons. The course centers on girls, women, and LGBT people's experiences with systems of punishment, surveillance, and control. In addition, students will learn how feminist and queer activists have responded to institutions of policing and mass incarceration; investigate how they have understood prison reform, prison abolition, and transformative justice; and consider the political, ethical, and methodological concerns that policing, and mass incarceration raise.

Learning Objectives

• Engage with scholarship describing the historical and contemporary structures, processes, and practices that shape power and resistance; justice and injustice; agency and subjection as it relates to study the U.S carceral state.
• Analyze how social and political forces intersect with gender, race, class, and sexuality to shape experiences with the carceral state.
• Define and apply key analytical concepts as they relate to gender, sexuality, race and social status.
• Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of social science theories related to the study of prisons with particular attention to ethnographic, sociolegal, feminist, queer, and transgender theoretical approaches.
• Develop the ability to critique theories, claims, and policies in the social and behavioral sciences through careful evaluation of an argument's major assertions, assumptions, evidential basis, and explanatory utility.
• Reflect upon the way in which theories and research from the social and behavioral sciences help elucidate the factors that led to the development and sustaining of the carceral state as well as potential solutions.

Teaching Method

Lecture and Discussion

Evaluation Method

short writing assignments, presentation, and final will be a group project

Class Materials (Required)

All materials for this course will be made available on Canvas - no purchase necessary.

Class Attributes

Social and Behavioral Science Foundational Discipl
U.S. Perspectives on Power, Justice, and Equity
SoC Individual and Social Behavior Distro