"Say Her Name:" Intersectional Feminism & Police Violence

Catalog description

Drawing on literature from criminology, Critical Race Theory, social ethics, and feminist/womanist thought, this seminar will apply an intersectional lens to state violence, from mass incarceration to police shootings of racialized people. This course will introduce students to the foundational concepts of Critical Race Theory and Intersectional Feminism. The course will reflect on the legal and intellectual context out of which white supremacy, white heteropatriarchy, hypermasculinity, and economic exploitation pervade our understanding of normativity as law and order. Students will map and critically examine the multiple trajectories along which the moral and legal authority of the state and its justifications for violence against its most vulnerable are engendered by the convergence of racism, sexism, and classism under the guise of normality, social order, common good, and even the will of God. Further, we will explore how to develop social interventions that disrupt these normative patterns of racialized state violence and facilitate the elimination of racially based, gender biased structures and practices in order to facilitate critical pedagogy, moral leadership, legal practice, and social movement organizing.