Crime and Punishment in American History

This course engages scholarship on the history of crime and punishment in America from the colonial period to the recent past. Readings consist of some theory, a handful of primary sources, and mostly secondary readings on such topics as: knowledge production about crime, discipline, and punishment; the history of prisons; carceral labor; penal reform; the relationship of institutionalized punishment to state-building and empire; the role of the illicit economy and incarceration in the making of racial capitalism; prisoners social movements; and the origins of mass incarceration.