Programação
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Race, Class & the American Prison
Professora: Micol Seigel (mseigel@indiana.edu)
Monitora: Luah Tomas (luahbt@usp.br)
I. Objetivo. This course aims to offer students a critical perspective on racism and political economy in U.S. prison policy and practice. Thematic units will introduce historical points of continuity shared across the three major racialized disciplinary regimes in US history: slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and mass incarceration. Theoretical material will provide skills with which to understand “race” as a historically-contingent, regionally-variant, socially-constructed concept. Considering the changes wrought by the economic paradigm of neoliberalism will help students explore the political economy of contemporary prisons and policing, the latter particularly visible and important in the last four years with the emergence of the protest Movement for Black Lives, better known by its Twitter handle, #BlackLivesMatter.
II. Metodologia. The course works historically and critically across the interdiscipline of Critical Prison Studies to offer an unusual approach requiring analysis of the ideological contours of prison policy and practice. Definitely not quantitative, well beyond qualitative, this method is interpretive, sometimes even speculative, recognizing the heuristic challenges of a system that so blatantly flaunts its illogics and the frustrations of all of its own stated goals. Pedagogical method focuses on active engagement via discussion, student presentation, and the individual experience of research and academic writing.
III. Avaliação. Grades will be based on the following:
Seminar participation, 25%. Students are expected to attend class on time, having completed the assigned reading in a way that allows them to discuss it intelligently, though they need not understand it entirely prior to the seminar meeting. Absences will deduct points proportionate to the percentage of course meetings missed (there are seven sessions in all).
Readings presentation, August 22, 15%. Working in groups of two or three, students will present one of the cluster of articles to extend and deepen the understanding of race developed in Evelyn Brooks Higgenbotham’s classic “Metalanguage of Race” article from Signs, 1992. Each group should present the content fully, including the context, historiography, argument, and intervention, assuming other students in the class will NOT have read the piece.
Radio interview of SAP student, August 29-September 12-September 19, 25%.
- August 29: students will select incarceration-related topics of interest to both SAP and USP participants. Possibilities include: relationships with family; health care in prison; electronic monitoring; myths and realities of prison life; race and racism in the criminal justice system; popular organization (prison gangs); alternatives to incarceration. Each group must have 1 USP student and at least 1 SAP student. Groups will meet. Discuss how all group members will prepare over the course of the next week. What research will you (the USP student) do? What conversations or self-reflection will the SAP student(s) try to have?
- September 12: USP and SAP students share research, experiences, and ideas. Based on this exchange, plan the interview. Block out areas of discussion; write a short set of questions together.
- September 19: perform the interview. Team up with another group. Each team should have 2 USP students and any number of SAP students. 1 USP student performs his or her interview while the other one translates. Do sequential translation (i.e., don’t talk over each other), making sure the Portuguese-speakers pause frequently to let the translator speak. When one group is finished, switch. SAP students not being interviewed should provide feedback on content and radio legibility (clarity and volume of speaking voice).
Final paper, due September 30, 35%. Each student will write a 1250-1750 word (5-7 page) research paper on a topic of their choice. Note that stages of the project are distributed across the term of the course. Papers can be written in Portuguese or English, with extra credit offered for English. Prof. Seigel will read and grade all papers based on content. She will also evaluate language for papers written in English; papers written in Portuguese will receive a grade for language from the monitora.
- Option 1: News or political phenomena; newspaper
research. Choosing an aspect of the
prison system of interest to them, students should locate 4-6 articles
discussing the issue or phenomenon in The
New York Times, Los Angeles Times,
Washington Post, and/or Chicago Tribune (USP’s library does not
offer these newspapers, but their websites allow readers to view up to five
articles/ month without a subscription).
Students should compose a coherent narrative out of the articles rather
than a serial summary of the pieces selected.
- Option 2: Activist engagement; internet research. Students should choose a US-based activist group or movement, locate its online presence, and consider its history, development, vision, mission, footprint, engagement, goals and prospects. Ambitious students might consider corresponding with the organization and integrating the response into the narrative presentation. Activist organizations are myriad; a sparse beginning includes Assata’s Daughters; #BLM; Black Youth Project 100; Critical Resistance; Disarm NYPD; Dream Defenders; Durham Beyond Policing; INCITE! Women of Color against Violence against Women; LA for Youth; Lifted Voices; Spirithouse; Unity and Struggle; Venus Project.
- Option 3: Departing from the radio interview with SAP students, write a paper comparing Brazilian to US prison conditions/relations/organization/evolution/etc. Perform newspaper or internet research as for options 1 & 2, above, to discover the US material. Use the interview and your general knowledge as the basis for the discussion of Brazil (so: no further research into the Brazilian case).
Please note my policy on extensions of duedates: all requests for extensions made at least 48 hours before the deadline will be granted. No reason need be provided. No extensions will be granted after this moment, which means, in this case, after midnight on Friday, September 28.
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