Readings in Carceral History

The rise of the carceral state is one of the more striking features of U.S. contemporary society and increasingly in the world. This course examines the history of incarceration/imprisonment around the globe. It begins with recent studies of ancient and medieval imprisonment, and then examines the rise of the penitentiary in the late eighteenth-century, incarceration's relationship to slavery, and the emergence of mass incarceration.