2015 Fall Semester Theme: Inequality and Mass Incarceration in the United States

The United States currently imprisons more people than any other country in the world. More than two million men and women are currently locked up behind bars, a population constituting roughly one in every one hundred American adults. This series will endeavor to understand how we have arrived at this era of mass incarceration and how it has shaped and reshaped social relations within contemporary American society. In particular, this series will examine how the phenomenon of mass incarceration reflects and intensifies racial, economic, spatial, and gendered inequalities. Additionally, this series will ask: what alternative ways of understanding justice are possible?

Events Related to Theme:

Thursday, October 1, 2015
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.
Morgan Lecture
Intersectionality, Black Youth and Political Activism
Patricia Hill Collins, University of Maryland

Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.
Family Life in an Era of Mass Incarceration
Christopher Wildeman ’02, Cornell University
With comments by Lauren Porter ’06, University of Maryland

Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.
How Things Fall Apart: Race and Suspicion in Police-Civilian Encounters
Nikki Jones, University of California, Berkeley

Thursday, November 5, 2015
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.
The New Asylums: Mentally Ill and Behind Bars
Doris Fuller, Treatment Advocacy Center

Thursday, November 19, 2015
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.
Federal Policy, Urban Policing, and the Roots of Mass Incarceration
Elizabeth Hinton, Harvard University

For information on submitting proposals for future themes /faculty seminars, click here.