Image: From 2023 Institute for Qualitative and Multimethod Research Ethnography Cohort at Syracuse University
This course is an introduction to criminology as a discipline in the liberal arts, as well as an introduction to academic research norms, practices, and writing. We will take a sociological and critical criminology approach to issues of crime and punishment. We will focus on the antecedents of crime and punishment as social issues, and question whether crime is solely of the individual. Through this lens, we will see how crime and criminalization are deeply linked to difference (race, gender, class, disability, etc.) and how these identities are constructed as deviant. We will also highlight how crime is portrayed in popular media with movies and documentaries relevant to each week’s topics – also known as popular criminology. You will leave this course with a profound understanding of critical criminology, dominant discourses in criminology, discernment of media portrayals of crime and punishment, and the ability to read, research, and write like a social scientist.
What is a social problem? How are social problems defined? Which social problems are worthy of outcry (and therefore change), and which are not (and therefore considered structural violence)? How are the problems we face globally, nationally, and right here in NYC interrelated struggles? These are questions we will take up throughout this semester. Sociologists suggest that the origins and causes of social problems lie outside of individuals, even though the effects of such problems are reflected in the behavior of individuals. With that, we examine the social, economic, and ideological causes and solutions to racism, sexism, homophobia, poverty, crime and violence, drug abuse, and environmental change. We will juxtapose social problems (which are often recognized as a problem by the larger society) against that of structural violence (which is rarely recognized by the larger society or rendered invisible). We will use the lens of relationality to better understand the cross-cutting cleavages of social problems, structural violence, and our shared social world. Students will leave this class with an expanded sociological imagination, the ability to critically look at social issues, and funked up ideas of how our society (nationally and globally) interconnectedly operates.
Punishment is the dominant discourse and response to harm and criminality. But what other alternatives are there? This course highlights the alternatives to retributive or punative justice, with particular emphasis on restorative and transformative justice. First, we will look at the causes of crime, many rooted in social structures of violence and dispossession. Then we will address how the current criminal legal system's focus on retributive justice does not get at the root causes of crime and often exacerbates social problems. Finally, we will look at alternatives, their efficacy, and feasibility for the US criminal legal system. Students will leave this course with an understanding of alternatives to incarceration, community-based harm reduction practices, and the potential for an abolitionist future.
We will analyze the relationship between crime, criminalization, and women in the U.S. criminal legal system and beyond. This course highlights prevailing theories, assumptions, and norms surrounding women and crime through an intersectional lens from the historical to the contemporary. This course offers alternatives and comparative approaches to address the criminalization of women and girls in practice and policy. We will explore how gendered and racialized bodies are at heightened risk for incarceration, policing, and stigma. We will explore theory surrounding the modern prison, gendered origins of the modern prison, and how different women and gender nonconforming persons have been rendered invisible in discussions of incarceration. Students will read from scholars, activists, and formerly incarcerated persons alike to gain multiple perspectives on our imprisonment crisis. Ultimately, students will leave this course with a profound understanding of jail and prison conditions for women, which women are most impacted by imprisonment, and ways women take back their agency and resist.
We will spend the semester investigating the roots and implications of incarceration and the disproportionate number of people of color in jails and prisons in the United States. We will pay attention to the consequences of these rates of incarceration on poor women and children, on immigrants, on transgender people, indigenous peoples, and on other communities of color. It is crucial to study the history of the modern penitentiary, including its ties to slavery and reactions to the civil rights movement. In so doing, we will attempt to understand not only the complex nature of violence and the role of the state in perpetrating and perpetuating violence, but also how we can contribute to developing analyses, strategies, and movements that address both interpersonal violence and the violence of state institutions.
FA 2024: SOC 1070 Social Problems | St. John's University
FA 2024: SOC 103 Criminology Proseminar (GRD) | St. John's University
SP 2025: SOC 2110 Women and Crime | St. John's University
SP 2025: SOC 1100 Sociology of Imprisonment | St. John's University
SP 2023: SOC 234 Women and Crime (GRD) | St. John's University
SU 2023: IQMR Ethnography Module (GRD) | Syracuse University
FA 2023: IAPA 1700 Time and Social Theory | Brown University
SU 2022: HMRT 389D Prisoners Rights as Human Rights | Binghamton University
SP 2023: IAPA 1700 Time and Social Theory | Brown University