AAST 220 - Doin’ Time: A History of Black Incarceration

Next Offered: Spring Semester 2009
Semester Offered: Second Semester
Credits (Range): 3 Hours
Attribute: 3 SS, CD

This course considers how a system of imprisoning Black men and women in the United States has been sustained from colonial times to the present. Beginning with Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, and Davis’s Are Prisons Obsolete?, the course establishes a theoretical grounding upon which to understand early systems of surveillance and confinement. The course surveys institutions, justice systems, and incarcerated men’s and women’s crimes, punishments and experiences negotiating what can arguably be termed 21st century re-enslavement.
Instructor: P. Brooks