Dr S.M. Rodriguez

This course is available on the MSc in Gender, MSc in Gender (Rights and Human Rights), MSc in Gender (Sexuality), MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation, MSc in Gender, Peace and Security and MSc in Gender, Policy and Inequalities. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course has a limited number of places (it is controlled access). 

Places are allocated based on a written statement. Priority will be given to students who have this course listed in their programme regulations. This may mean that not all students who apply will be able to get a place on this course.

This course centers around the critical feminist inquiry: are prisons obsolete? The class will focus on the history, growth, and current functioning of global systems of stratification, surveillance, and segregation/detention with the critical goal of questioning the future of such carceral structures. The course begins with the iconic book, Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis and foundational anticarceral feminist examinations. The texts for the course intersect with several fields, including Geography, History, Africana Studies, and Critical Disability Studies. Through transnational, decolonial and interdisciplinary exploration, students are introduced to a range of sites and strategies of carceral and anticarceral feminisms and exposed to methods of scholarly interrogation and analysis. The course introduces justice-based terminologies and political philosophies, and outlines various justice models such as retributive, rehabilitative, restorative, incapacitative, and transformative justice.

30 hours of workshops in the WT.

Students will be expected to produce 1 reflection essay (1,000 words) in the WT.

1. Ben-Moshe, Liat. 2020. Decarcerating disability: Deinstitutionalization and prison abolition. U of Minnesota Press.
2. Bernstein, Elizabeth. 2012. "Carceral politics as gender justice? The “traffic in women” and neoliberal circuits of crime, sex, and rights." Theory and society 41: 233-259.
3. Davis, Angela Y. 2011. Are prisons obsolete?. Seven stories press.
4. Davis, Angela Y., Gina Dent, Erica Meiners, and Beth Richie. 2022. Abolition. Feminism. Now, London: Hamish Hamilton.
5. Rodriguez, S. M. 2022. Forging Black Safety in the Carceral Diaspora: Perverse Criminalization, Sexual Corrections, and Connection-Making in a Death World. Social Justice, 49(3), 97-113.
6. Tapia Tapia, Silvana. 2022. Feminism, Violence Against Women, and Law Reform: Decolonial Lessons from Ecuador. Routledge.
7. Thuma, Emily L. 2019. All our trials: Prisons, policing, and the feminist fight to end violence. University of Illinois Press.
8. Walia, Harsha. 2021. Border and rule: Global migration, capitalism, and the rise of racist nationalism. Haymarket Books.

Research proposal (100%) in the ST Week 1.

The research proposal consists of three parts:

• Epistemological Reflection – 1,500-word written piece, reflecting on a selection of readings alongside social context or personal standpoint
• Site of Analysis (Case or Policy) – poster presentation, 1,000-word written piece, or a documentary video roughly 10 minutes in length
• Proposed Method of Study – 500-word review of methodological and ethical considerations