Summer Session Two Courses (August 4-September 6, 2008)

In this course we will examine the relationship between race, class and punishment in the United States. The U.S. has the largest prison complex in the world with more than two million people currently behind bars. An overwhelming majority of those incarcerated are poor, and a vast majority are people of color. In fact, one-third of all young African-American men are currently in prison or under direct surveillance and control of federal and state criminal justice systems. This growing carceral complex is the product of more than thirty years of continuous expansion. Why has the U.S. undertaken such a massive project of incarceration? Why are so many of the imprisoned in the U.S. people of color? Why has the number of women incarcerated increased by 300% since 1980? What is the place of punishment in the economic process? What is its importance in the exercise and maintenance of power? What is the role of punishment in class struggle? How should we understand these phenomenal developments in the context of contemporary financial globalization? What distinguishes our approach in this course, in part, is the attention we will give to the role of culture in facilitating the expansion of the prison system. We look to culture in this context because the late twentieth century is marked by increasing evocations of ‘the crime problem’ in the discourse of elected officials, the centrality accorded crime reportage by the news media, and the mounting popularity of literary, televisual, and cinematic representations of fictionalized crime. All of these ideological operations have tended to create perceptions of a crime-saturated social environment whereby nearly every punitive measure put before the public receives strong support. It is this complex work of culture that we will try to understand in relation to the State and corporate-directed growth of the prison industrial complex. And lastly, this trend towards the increasing utilization of imprisonment to deal with social inequalities and problems is not confined to the U.S. alone as more and more countries seek a prison fix. Consequently, our approach will draw upon historical and contemporary analyses and comparative studies from around the world.

This class explores the participation of U.S. women in modern and contemporary social  movements locally, nationally, and internationally. It examines why and how women organize for social and political change at home and globally, the constraints on their actions, the impact of constructions of sexuality and gender within social movements, and women’s understandings of their own roles in terms of local, national and global struggles to end economic, social, political and educational disparities.

Since the 1970's, Jamaican popular music has been a dominant musical voice in the Caribbean and beyond.  The 1972 partnership of Island Records, the British-based record label, and reggae icon Bob Marley, signaled a new and important presence in the international pop music world and a rising voice of Third World consciousness.  The commercial viability of reggae led to the globalization of a music and culture with a complex semiotics and particularity to Jamaican society.  Musically and sociologically, the influence of ska, reggae, Jamaican DJ culture, and Rastafarianism has been a significant factor in multiple continents, creating a web of relationships between communities in Jamaica, the United States, Great Britain and many countries in Africa.

This course will utilize the music and life of Bob Marley to generate a number of questions about the role of popular music in the globalization of culture and the creation, continuation, and challenging of racial and ethnic identities.  We will explore the roots and development of Afro-Jamaican popular music and culture, its leading figures and styles, and its enduring influence throughout the world.  Attention will be given to the African and Jamaican diasporas, Jamaican immigrant communities in the United States and Great Britain, pan-African/pan-West Indian identity, the intersection of culture and politics, the complex matrix of race and class, the trans-national popular music industry, and in its most general sense, the role of music in identity.  We will view music as a social formation whose analysis illustrates the connection between emergent post/neo-colonial identities and shifting attitudes about race and ethnicity.