Carceral Connecticut: Policing Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the "Land of Steady Habits"
AFAM 270
Spring 2023 not offered
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| Course Cluster and Certificates: Community-Engaged Learning, Service Learning |
Often considered a progressive bastion, Connecticut in fact has been at the forefront of carceral practices since the eighteenth century. In 1773, the colony converted a copper mine into the below-ground Newgate Prison. Half a century later, the state constructed one of the nation's first penitentiaries, in operation in Wethersfield, Connecticut, until its demolition in the 1960s. In each of its iterations, Connecticut's carceral system has policed, shaped, and disciplined its subjects along lines of race, class, and gender, constructing the normative and punishing deviation. Through engagement with rich state and local archives, this course will use several case studies to examine how Connecticut's carceral practices have made and re-made the state's legacy of slavery and policed the borders of accepted gender and sexuality in this place nicknamed "the land of steady habits."
The Middlesex County Historical Society's rich collection of late-19th and early-20th-century Middletown police logs, county jail records, and police court proceedings will enable students to analyze on-the-ground carceral practices in Connecticut. The Connecticut State Archives's extensive state penitentiary records, pardon petitions, and other state-level records will enrich and contextualize the local picture in Middletown. In this service learning course, students will share their research with the community through public presentations, online, and by planning exhibits at the historical society and on campus. This course, and students' public-facing research in this course, is part of the Carceral Connecticut Project based at Wesleyan University. See: https://carceralconnecticut.com |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS AFAM |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
Major Readings:
We will read selections from the following major secondary sources, as well as an array of primary sources:
Caron, Denis, A Century in Captivity: The Life and Trials of Prince Mortimer (2006)
Davis, Angela Y., Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)
Goodheart, Lawrence B., The Solemn Sentence of Death: Capital Punishment in Connecticut (2011)
Manion, Jen, Liberty¿s Prisoners: Carceral Culture in Early America (2015)
Muhammad, Khalil Gibran, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America (2010)
Price, Joshua M., Prison and Social Death (2015)
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Examinations and Assignments:
Short reading response papers, midterm paper, final paper or creative final project
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Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
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