Crime, Law, & Society through The Wire

Catalog description

This course examines the intersections of crime, law, and society. The critically acclaimed HBO series, The Wire, is used as a central text to analyze structures of power, inequality, and social control in urban America. Through academic research and critical discussion, students will explore how systemic and institutionalized racism, economic marginalization, and other forms of oppression shape communities, policing, political institutions, labor markets, and media narratives. The course emphasizes critical self-reflection, asking students to analyze their own social positions, beliefs, and assumptions as they engage with the lived experiences of historically oppressed groups represented in the show.