Description: Mass incarceration is one of the most pressing social problems of the 21st century and it has become well understood that prisons perpetuate injustices for those that are detained within them and for those who live in the communities that surround them. What is less understood are how the principles of carcerality are manifested in spaces outside of prisons and jails. As it currently stands caging, detention, punishment, surveillance, labor/resource extraction, and restriction of movement are a few of the fundamental aspects of incarceration, but what this course will explore is how these themes appear in non-traditional contexts such as agriculture, animal agriculture, and the environmental movement. Carceral logics have a disproportionate impact on working-class people, poor people, communities of color and the more-than human world. This course aims to define carcerality, explore why carceral logics exist, address how carceral logics are manifested in non-traditional spaces and imagines a world without the carceral system. Throughout the course, we will expand our understanding of the carceral system through an intersectional lens that addresses anti-violence movements, animal rights, prison abolition, environmental justice, disability rights and grassroots organizing. This course aims to reimagine what is meant by “mass incarceration” and through this reimagining we are able to address what a deeply radical and intersectional decarceration movement might look like.
Mass incarceration is one of the most pressing social problems of the 21st century. The U.S. has one of the highest rates of incarceration of any nation in the world, despite violent crime rates declining over the past few decades while the number of individuals who have spent time behind bars has increased. This has combined with an increase in the number of prisons and rehabilitation centers that have been built across the country, and corporations associated with the punishment industry have made extreme profits from this growth in the prison industrial complex. The impact of this prison nation is broad reaching but has had a disproportionate impact on communities of color. This course examines why there has been such a rapid increase in incarceration and prisons across the United States and why people have allowed for this increase over the past several decades. We interrogate how U.S. social control practices are intertwined with racialized and gendered bodies. Throughout the course we discuss efforts to transform our penal system through anti-violence movements, prison abolition, reproductive justice and grassroots organizing particularly within communities of color and LGBTQ circles.
The course examines several dimensions of food insecurity. It starts with an assessment of household food insecurity in the United States, with discussions covering access to food in urban and rural areas. The course also examines the research and conceptualization of food systems as we analyze concepts such as “food deserts,” “food oases,” “food swamps,” “food grasslands,” and “food sovereignty.” We examine food systems and take a supply-chain approach wherein we study food producers (farmers, urban agriculturalists, community gardeners). We also study food suppliers and processors such as farmers markets, community-supported agriculture, and food retailers. Students have an opportunity to study incubator kitchens and small-scale entrepreneurship in low-income communities. We also examine consumer access to food as well as perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors; understudied parts of food systems such as urban farms, community and school gardens, and emergency food assistance programs; and food production and food acquisition strategies in low-income areas. The course also studies the pricing of food and whether retailers decide to sell healthy foods or not. Three to four mandatory field trips are being planned—to farms, farmers markets, grocery stores, and other food outlets in and around the New Haven area—but these could be affected by the pandemic protocols and the weather. All students complete an individual take-home assignment, group class exercises, and a group term paper. Attendance at field trips, class attendance, and class participation (including class presentations) are also graded.