AFRS 110 - Prison Abolition and Black Liberation

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

This course examines regimes of imprisonment and state violence that spawn carceral structures and the strategies of resistance racialized captives have used to disrupt and dismantle them. By calling into question perpetual states of siege practiced by the United States: violence against women, red scares, the War on Drugs, Poverty, and Terror, this course makes connections between domestic policing practices and military campaigns across the Global South. We study how practices of targeted criminalization are politically driven and racially motivated so that students can rethink the meaning of concepts such as harm, justice, and crime beyond carceral logics. Students learn to relate the project of slavery’s abolition to prison abolition not just analogically but through a material account of their ideological and historical formation. Course material cover writings by: Angela Davis, Joy James, George Jackson, Stuart Hall, Michel Foucault, Franz Fanon, Gina Dent, Mariame Kaba, and Ruth Wilson Glimore, among others. Jasmine Syedullah.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS