COML 2009 - Prison Literature: Race, Carcerality, and Abolition

(crosslisted) ENGL 2909, GOVT 2006, SHUM 2009
(ALC-AS, CA-AS)

Spring. 3 credits. Letter grades only.

E. Ghanayem.

The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. In addition to the more than two million people imprisoned under the criminal justice system, the U.S. government captures even more people into carceral spaces within and beyond its borders. Looking into a range of texts from Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian American, and Arab American writers, this course examines the U.S. penal system, not only as prisons and physical places, but also in state practices that decide social value, disadvantage people based on race, and criminalize them accordingly. Ultimately, this course asks and answers the following questions: what is the relationship between race and punishment? What are the socially constructed roles of incarceration? And what are some of the narratives and abolitionist, decolonial perspectives that push against them?