Carceral Cinema and the Abolitionist Imagination

This course will examine the relationship between the carceral apparatus, i.e. the matrix of police, prisons, prosecutors, parole boards, prison guards, probation officers, etc., and the commercial/industrial cinematic apparatus which has historically valorized and naturalized hegemonic constructions of crime and punishment for popular consumption. Instruction will consider paradigms of crime, policing, prisons, resistance, rebellion and abolition in relation to questions of innocence and guilt, racialized criminality, property relations and the potential for a socially transformative cinema.