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Instructors: Univ-Prof. Dr. Mita Banerjee
Event type:
Seminar
Displayed in timetable as:
05.866.410
Hours per week:
2
Language of instruction:
Englisch
Min. | Max. participants:
- | 30
Registration group: AS 410
Priority scheme: Senatsrichtlinie
Requirements / organisational issues:
Today, the US have the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Even more crucially, however, incarceration disproportionately affects ethnic minorities, especially African American men. This situation has caused legal scholar Michelle Alexander to speak of the “new Jim Crow” in this context. If one in three black men will end up in prison at least once in his life, this amounts to a new form of segregation. In this seminar, we will explore how the so-called “prison-industrial complex” is portrayed in documentary films such as 13th, but also in feature films such as Boyz in the Hood. We will discuss the meaning of prisons in contemporary US culture but will also turn to prison studies as forms of resistance to the logic of punishment and mass incarceration. What happens to our visions of black masculinity in this context? Do shows such as Orange is the New Black address or trivialize the meaning of imprisonment in today’s America?
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