This course introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
The United States, ostensibly “the land of the free,” currently has over 2.2 million prisoners––more than anywhere else in the world. Despite a steady decline in crime rates from the 1980s onward, thousands of new private and federal prisons have been constructed and filled to capacity, a phenomenon we now call “mass incarceration.” The occupants of these facilities are overwhelmingly Black and Latinx, half of whom serve time for nonviolent crimes. How and why did this happen? The radical feminist and prison abolitionist Angela Davis suggests an answer to this question, contending that prison, by providing a way to contain “disposable” populations, actually “relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society.”
Through an engagement with literature, film, and critical theory, this course explores the American prison both as a space of literal confinement and as a cultural construct. We will close-read prison writings by Malcolm X and Mumia Abu-Jamal, discuss movies such as Shawshank Redemption and I Love You Phillip Morris, and study the carceral theories of Michel Foucault’s Discipline & Punish. Over the course of semester, we will confront difficult, nearly insoluble, problems that challenge our conceptions not only of freedom and oppression, but of justice and resistance as well: What can the testimonies of
incarcerated people teach us about American culture? Are there viable alternatives to the current prison system, or is incarceration a necessary part of civil society? Do prisons rehabilitate criminals—or create them?
Dominick Knowles