MAS 392 Abolition/The Carceral State

TH 2-5 pm #40405 GWB 1.138 Michael Hames García

This course approaches abolition as a set of open-ended questions to be asked generously in response to the conditions of a radically unjust and unfree world. Abolitionist visions advocate for decarceration, defunding of police and prisons, and removal of the criminal legal system from people’s lives. Abolitionism is also a creative practice that entails discovering, developing, and promoting alternatives to policing and prisons such as mutual aid associations, restorative justice processes, and nonviolent approaches to personal and community safety. Drawing from many disciplines—including American studies, ethnic studies, gender studies, geography, history, and law—this course takes up topics like local policing, campus policing, family policing (child welfare systems), e-carceration and electronic monitoring, crimmigration and border enforcement, and involuntary medical confinement. Although we will take the United States as a primary context for our inquiry, assigned materials and in-class discussion will make frequent use of comparisons and connections to non–U. S. contexts.