Spring 2008 Advance Course Information

This information effective for spring 2008. Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.

Legal Studies

[ LGST-105C] [ LGST-125 ]

105C. Modern Political Thought

Instructor: Megan Thomas
Office: Merrill 163
Hours:  t.b.a.; also available by appointment
Phone: 9-2026 (office)
E-mail: mcthomas@ucsc.edu
Teaching Assistants:

Note: This syllabus is subject to revision.

Course Description

This course surveys 19th- and 20th-century political theory, emphasizing continental European thought.  In the first two units of the course, we will read texts that investigate the themes of human consciousness, labor, and alienation.  The third unit of the course groups works that address issues of freedom and morality, and the fourth and final unit is on capitalism and culture.  By keeping these themes in mind, we will compare and draw together texts that in many ways have quite divergent methods, styles, and concerns; at the same time, as we try to make connections between works, we will still also try to pay attention to their differences and to the particular concerns that each theorist raises.  Authors covered include Fanon, Foucault, Gilman, Hegel, Horkheimer and Adorno, Kollontai, Marx and Engels, Mill, Nietzsche, and Weber.

Lectures      

days and time tba         
location t.b.a

Discussion Sections

Sections begin on the first day of class: Monday, March 31, 2008.

Course Requirements and Grading

Attendance and Participation

Students are expected to attend all lectures and sections well prepared, and to participate in discussions in section, and, sometimes, in the larger lecture setting.  You are always responsible for any changes in the readings, schedule, etc. that may be announced in class; if you need to miss a class, find out from one of your classmates what you missed before you approach any of your teachers to ask for clarification, if you need it.

Preliminary Exam

Exams for this course are designed to test your knowledge of the assigned readings and of material presented in lectures; they are also designed to encourage you to synthesize and analyze the course materials.  They will be in-class, closed-book and closed-note exams.  They will consist of a section of multiple choice and short answer/ID questions, and a section of an essay or essays.  The preliminary exam is scheduled for Tuesday, April 22. during our regular class meeting time.  Only in the case of true emergencies will a make-up exam be administered. 

Paper-Option Prelim

You may choose to write a paper (4-5 pages) instead of taking the preliminary exam; you may prefer to do this if you want extra practice writing essays that are formally evaluated.  Paper topics will be distributed from which you can choose.  You must complete the paper before the preliminary exam begins—if you do not hand in a paper by 10:00 on the morning of the exam, you must sit for the exam at that time.  There will be no exceptions to this, except in case of true emergencies.  Technological difficulties do not constitute emergencies.  This option is not available for the final exam. 

Paper

There is one paper required for this course (two, if you opt to write a paper rather than sit for the prelim); this is an opportunity for you to work through a text or texts as thoroughly as you can, develop an argument about them, and work to present your argument in the most polished way possible.  Paper topics will be distributed from which you can choose.  The paper (6-7 pages) is due at the beginning of class on Tuesday, May 20 at 10am; once lecture begins that day, any paper arriving will be considered late.  Papers will be marked down for lateness at the rate of 1/3 of a letter grade a day: 1/3 of a grade for up to 24 hours late, 2/3 of a grade for 24-48 hours late, one  full grade for 48-72 hours late, etc.  (Please note: This late policy is only applicable for this paper; no late papers will be accepted as an option for the prelim exam).

Final Exam

The final exam will follow roughly the same format as the prelim exam; it will, obviously, be longer.  It is comprehensive—you may be asked about any of the material that was covered in the entire course.  The final exam is scheduled for t.b.a according to registrar’s schedule  Only in the case of a true emergency will a make-up exam be allowed.  You must plan to attend the final exam to make it possible for you to pass the course.

Re-Write Option

Students may choose to submit a re-written version of their paper for a new grade (in which case the final grade for that paper will be an average of the original grade and the grade of the re-written paper).  Re-written papers will only be read and graded if the following conditions are met: 1) The original paper must have been submitted on time.  2) You must meet with your TA about your paper re-write before submitting it (it is up to you to leave enough time to schedule this before the re-write is due).  3) You must submit, along with the re-written version of the paper, the original paper with your TA’s comments and original grade.  4) The re-written paper must be a substantive revision of the original paper (when you meet with your TA make sure that you understand what this means).  Submitting a re-written paper does not guarantee that the revised paper will earn a higher grade than the original.

Grading

Final grades for the course will be determined as follows:

     Section Grade (includes class participation and informal work)               20%
     Preliminary Exam (or paper, as applicable)                                          15%
     Paper (6-7 pages)                                                                             30%
     Final exam                                                                                        35%

Academic Integrity

Familiarize yourself with the University’s principles, policies, and procedures regarding breaches of academic integrity.  These can be found on the “academic integrity” website at:

http://www.ucsc.edu/academics/academic_integrity/undergraduate_students/ 

If you are unsure about anything that you read on this website, or what is acceptable or not acceptable in completing assignments for this course, talk to your TA or to me.  No offenses against standards of academic integrity will be tolerated. 

Required Reading

Texts are at the heart of this course; you need to be able to read them as thoroughly as you can.  The best format for doing this is print, and so though some of these books are available in whole or in part electronically, you must have a print version (whether original or photocopy).  Because we will frequently refer to the text in lectures and sections, you must bring the assigned reading with you to all meetings.  It will be easiest for you if you buy all of the required books and the reader.  Both books and the reader are for sale at The Literary Guillotine, 204 Locust St. [near Cedar St.] in downtown Santa Cruz, open Monday-Saturday, 10am-6pm.  The store’s website is: http://www.literaryguillotine.com/. 

You might be able to locate these books used, or in different editions.  I recommend that you use the editions I’ve specified as it will make it easier for you to locate passages when we refer to them in lecture and discussion sections; if you use another edition you are responsible for making sure that it includes in full the sections that we will read for class, and it will be up to you to keep track of the differences in page numbering, translation, etc. (and you must cite and quote from these editions for the paper[s] that you write for the class).  These books (including those from which reader selections are drawn) will also be available on 2-hour loan at the Reserves desk (not e-Res) at McHenry Library.

Books

• Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin White Masks. Translated by Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press, 1967. (Reissue, October 1991. ISBN: 0802150845, list price $13)
• Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1979. (Reprint, 1995.  ISBN: 0679752552, list price $14)
• Robert C. Tucker (ed). The Marx-Engels Reader. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2nd edition, 1978.  (ISBN: 039309040x, list price $28)
• Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. New York: Dover Publications, 2002.  (ISBN: 0486421309, list price $2.50)
• Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo. Translated by Walter Kaufman. New York: Vintage, 1967. (Reissue, 1989. ISBN: 0679724621, list price $13)
• Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons.  New York: Dover Publications, 2003.  (ISBN: 048642703X. list price $9.95)

Reader Contents

• Hegel, G. W. F. 1977. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  (selections: pp. 46-57, 104-138).
• Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. 1998.  Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications (selections: Chapters I and XI, pp. 1-11, 111-122).
• Kollontai, Alexandra. 1977. “Make Way for Winged Eros: A Letter to Working Youth.” In Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai. Translated by A. Holt. Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill and Company, pp. 276-292.
• Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. 2002. "Enlightenment as Mass Deception." In Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 94-136.
  

Course Schedule

Please note that this schedule and specific page numbers of readings are subject to change.  All readings should be done in advance of the class meetings under which they are listed.

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125 State Punishment in America: A History of the Evolution
of U.S. Penal Culture

Instructor: Eric Cummins
Office: Crown 110, TTh 4-5
Phone: 9-4621 (office), 338-8287 (home)
E-mail: ecummins@ucsc.edu

Course Description

This course  explores the history and theory of U.S. state punishment from its very beginnings in the 17th century to the present.    Acknowledging all along the way the tremendous complexity  and vast body of historical detail facing us, we will nonetheless note  general patterns of change in state punishment practices and  reflect on changing  models of criminal deviance, focusing on how each  punishment system has legitimated particular models of criminal deviance, crime, and its “correction.”  One goal will be to understand how punishment systems form around and defend popular cultural narratives about crime.  As an aid in this task, we will  bring to the table the historical explanations of crime and punishment of “classic “ culture theorists  Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Rusche and Kircheimer,  Michel Foucault, and Norbert Elias.  At course end, students should have a good general knowledge in some historical detail of our culture’s movement from slavery and pre-prison corporal punishment to the invention and consolidation of the penitentiary for both men and women, with its accompanying convict-lease and chain gang variants.  We will then proceed to a discussion of the turn of the 20th century social reform movement  and the consequent  rise and fall of the rehabilitative prison and  end with a critical examination of the contemporary  prison and our current discourse on crime .

Required Texts

• Garland, David, Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990)
• Mauer, Marc, The Race to Incarcerate (New York: The New Press, 1999)
• Course Reader

Students will also choose one of the following and participate in a small group presentation to class on its contents (see syllabus below for presentation dates):

• Oshinsky, David, “Worse Than Slavery:” Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice (New York: The Free Press, 1996)
• Hamm, Theodore, Rebel and a Cause: Caryl Chessman and the Politics of the Death Penalty in Postwar California, 1948-1974 (Berkeley: Univ. of Cal. Press, 2001)
• Watterson, Kathryn. Women in Prison: Inside the Concrete Womb, revised edition (Boston: Northeastern Univ. Press, 1996)
• Conover, Ted, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (New York, Vintage,  2001)

Written Assignments

An essay midterm and final exam and a short in-class presentation (as part of a small working group) with accompanying essay of approx. 8-10 pages.   Two additional short writing exercises.

Student Evaluation

• Midterm: 25% 
• Final: 50%
• Presentation/ write-up/overall participation and all other writing: 25%

This is a portfolio-graded class.  Keep all written work together in a folder to be evaluated at course end.

Contact

I make myself available to my students and expect—insist on—their working with me actively, keeping me posted on the progress of their work and engaged in their thinking about course themes in general.  This way students can receive a narrative evaluation that really means something.

I expect students to be actively engaged in class discussions ,to have done the readings on time and have them fresh in mind.

Topics and Readings

Note: Readings should be completed for the day on which they appear below. Readings in the course reader are designated (cr).

WEEK 1

Introduction and Preliminaries

Lecture: State Punishment Before the Prison

Mauer, Marc, The Race to Incarcerate, pp. 1-41.

Haney, Craig, “Riding the Punishment Wave: On the Origins of Our Devolving Standards of Decency” (cr)

Lecture: American Colonial Penality: Norbert Elias’ “Civilizing Processes”

“Rival Theories of the Transformation of Punishment Systems and Penal Practices”  Colvin, Mark (cr)

“The Shape and Nature of the Law,” and “The Law of God and Man,” Friedman, Lawrence (cr)

“Puritanism and Deviancy,” Erickson, Kai (cr)

WEEK 2

Lecture : Emergence of the Prison/Foucault and the Transfer of Punishment to the Soul

“Disciplines and Sciences of the Individual,” Rabinow, Paul (cr)

“Punishment and the Technologies of Power: The Work of Michel Foucault” and “Beyond the Power Perspective: A Critique of Foucault on Punishment”  Garland, David

Lecture: The Early Penitentiary/Durkheim’s Notion of Social Solidarity

“Punishment and Social Solidarity: The Work of Emile Durkheim” and “Punishment and the Construction of Authority: A Reworking of Durkheimian Themes”  Garland, David

WEEK 3

Lecture: Consolidation of the Penitentiary  in the U.S. Northeast/Marxist Views

“The Political Economy of Punishment: Rusche and Kirchheimer and the Marxist tradition” and “Punishment as Ideology and Class Control: Variations on Marxist Themes” Garland, David

The Discovery of the Asylum Rothman, David. (cr)

Lecture: Women Prisoners in the 19th Century: Origins of the Reformatory

“Women and Criminal Justice to the End of the Nineteenth Century” and “The Mechanics of Power II: Professionalization and Reform in the Late Nineteenth Century”  Friedman, Lawrence . (cr)

“The Problem of the Woman Prisoner, 1820-70,” “ ‘The Helping Hand’: The Origins and Ideas of Women’s Prison Reform, 1840-1900,” “Feminist or Feminine?  The Establishment of Separate Women’s Prisons, 1870-1900,” Freedman, Estelle  (cr)

WEEK 4

Lecture: Punishment in the Deep South: Slavery, the Chain Gang, and the Convict Lease System

“Penitentiary and Slavery: Substance” in Hirsch, Adam Jay.

*Student Group Presentation on Oshinsky, David, “Worse Than Slavery:” Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice

Lecture: 19th Century Patterns/Weberian Themes

“The Rationalization of Punishment: Weberian Themes and Modern Penality” in Garland, David, Punishment and Modern Society

WEEK 5

Lecture: The American Love of the Outlaw

“Lawful Law and Lawless Law: Forms of American Violence”  Friedman, Lawrence (cr)

 “Outlaw Gangs and Social Bandits” White, Richard (cr)

 “The Victorian Criminalization of Men”  Wiener, Martin J. (cr)

“The Negro Would Be More Than an Angel to Withstand Such Treatment”: African-American Homicide in Chicago, 1875-1910, Adler, Jeffrey  S. (cr)

EXAM: IN-CLASS BLUE BOOK ESSAY

WEEK 6

Lecture: Late 19th Century Criminological Science and the Social Work of Penal Reform

“The New Criminology of Women, 1900-1920,” Freedman, Estelle (cr)

“The Failure of Reform: United States, 1865-1965,” The Oxford History of the Prison (cr)

Lecture: Prisons in the Era of ‘The Big House’

“Prohibition, Patronage, and Profit: Building the New Prison at Jackson,” from ch. 2 in Bright, Charles  (cr)

 “The Gangster as Tragic Hero” and “Movie Chronicle: The Westerner” Warshow, Robert (cr)

 APRIL 30 Film: San Quentin: Inside the Big House

WEEK 7

Lecture: The Treatment Era: The Prison as Hospital

 “Caryl Chessman and the Roots of Convict Resistance” Cummins, Eric  (cr)

Student Group Presentation on Hamm, Theodore, Rebel and a Cause: Caryl Chessman and the Politics of the Death Penalty in Postwar California, 1948-1974

Lecture: Contradictions of Treatment Ideology and the Rise of the Prison Movement

The Race to Incarcerate,  Mauer, Marc. pp 42-100

“Taking the Yard, Freeing the Mind: The Black Muslims” Cummins, Eric  (cr)

Film: A View to a Kill

WEEK 8

Lecture: Race and Power on the Yard

The Race to Incarcerate,  Mauer, Marc. pp 101-161

“Race, ‘Applied Science’,” and “Public Policy: The Case of the Criminaloid”  Miller, Jerome G. (cr)

*Review of the legend of Staggerlee, in Oshinsky, David M., Worse Than Slavery

 “Criminal Inequality in America: Patterns and Consequences,” Hagan, John and Peterson, Ruth D. (cr)

WEEK 9

Lecture: The Prison Movement

Film: Day of the Gun

Lecture: The Prison Gang System and The Age of the Super-Max Prison

“From the Convict Lease System to the Super-Max Prison,” Davis, Angela (cr)

The Race to Incarcerate, Mauer, Marc, pp. 162-194.

Week 10

Lecture: The Current Crisis: Two SHU Court Cases

*Student Group Presentation on Conover, Ted, New Jack: Guarding Sing Sing

Lecture: Course Conclusions: What Happened, and Why?

 “Social Change and Social Order in Late Modernity”  Garland, David (cr)

*Student Group Presentation: Watterson, Kathryn and Meda
Chesney-Lind,  Women in Prison: Inside the Concrete Womb

 “Fortress L.A.” Davis, Mike (cr)

 “The Engineering of Social Control: The Search for the Silver Bullet” in Crime and Inequality, Marx, Gary (cr)

 FINAL EXAM: IN-CLASS BLUE BOOK

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