Abolition Lab

Catalog description

This course will explore the theory and practice of what Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Mariame Kaba, the Abolition Journal Collective, Angela Davis, The Revolution Starts at Home zine and many others call Abolition. This term refers to the abolition of police, prisons, borders, forms of surveillance and control that rely on state sponsored forms of violence as well as the more ingrained and unconscious punitive structures that shape our own social relations and daily habits. We will keep multiple and intersecting scales of abolition at the center of the course, including the space of the classroom up to global carceral connections that bind the borders of the U.S., Mexico, Israel, and Palestine. Thus, we will also use our own specific context to understand abolitionist theory and imagine abolitionist practices. This course will not be a traditional seminar. Though we will discuss materials about abolition weekly, we will devote an equal amount of time to doing collaborative research with attention to expanding what counts as legitimate sources of research and experimentation. Final collaborative projects will develop in relation to this work we are doing throughout the course.