Lockdown America: Race and Incarceration in the Land of the Free

This course is about prisons, jails, and the place they hold in American life, drawing heavily from the instructor's experiences of fieldwork in prisons and jails in the San Francisco Bay Area. Prisons and Jails are commonly imagined as isolated places, behind high walls, wire fences, and metal doors. The story ends as the 'bad guy' is sent to prison, after all. The reality is far from this; what happens in and around prison and jails impacts American society, culture, economics, geography, and daily life in myriad ways. This course undertakes to undo many of the myths and misconceptions about incarceration and place the prison back in the American landscape. Using a wide variety of sources of data (news articles, blog posts, essays, academic articles and book chapters, podcasts and documentaries) and prioritizing the voices of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, this course encourages students to critically interrogate the terms used to describe and justify mass incarceration. Particular attention will be payed to the role of racial inequality in the perpetuation of incarceration, and the role of incarceration in the perpetuation of racial inequality. As such, there will be no week 'on race' but race will be a constant and consistent element of every week of this course. This course is also designed to improve participants' writing and will involve multiple opportunities for directed feedback to develop participants' prose style and argumentation.