State of the Carceral State and Mass Incarceration

Abstract

This “state of the field” lightning round panel considers new work and future directions for scholarship on the carceral state and mass incarceration. We bring together nine of the leading scholars on the carceral state to discuss America’s entanglement with incarceration, migrant detention, policing, surveillance, and punitive ideas from its founding to the present moment. In the past decade, few areas of U.S. history have received as much attention and new scholarship than those writing on the ways the carceral state has shaped state-building, politics, immigration, race, gender, and sexuality. The aim of this panel, then, is to take stock of the new works on this topic so we can discern different narratives, interpretations, and approaches to a fast-growing field. As such, the panel will offer a survey and assessment of the latest work. We will then turn to new directions for the field that consider the latest approaches to the U.S. carceral state, while also moving beyond the nation to consider transnational carceral regimes.

ROUNDTABLE

ROUNDTABLE

Presented By
Robert T. Chase, Stony Brook University, State University of New YorkHeather Ann Thompson, University of MichiganSimon E. Balto, University of IowaJen Manion, Amherst CollegeDan Berger, University of Washington BothellStuart Schrader, Johns Hopkins UniversityKelly Lytle Hernández, University of California, Los AngelesSarah Haley, University of California, Los Angeles

ROUNDTABLE

ROUNDTABLE

Presented By
Robert T. Chase, Stony Brook University, State University of New YorkJen Manion, Amherst College

ROUNDTABLE

ROUNDTABLE

Presented By
Heather Ann Thompson, University of Michigan

ROUNDTABLE

ROUNDTABLE

Presented By
Simon E. Balto, University of Iowa

ROUNDTABLE

ROUNDTABLE

Presented By
Dan Berger, University of Washington Bothell

ROUNDTABLE

ROUNDTABLE

Presented By
Stuart Schrader, Johns Hopkins University

Presenter: Simon E. Balto, University of Iowa

Presenter: Dan Berger, University of Washington Bothell

Presenter: Robert T. Chase, Stony Brook University, State University of New York
Robert T. Chase is associate professor of history at Stony Brook University. He is the author of We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners Rights in Postwar America (UNC, JPP, 2020) which centers coerced prison labor at the heart of the Jim Crow South where the prison labor strike became a critical means by which Black Power and Chicana/o Movement prisoners resisted southern carceral regimes. He is also the editor of Caging Borders and Carceral States: Incarcerations, Immigration Detentions, and Resistance (UNC Press, JPP, 2019). His work has been published in the Journal of Urban History, the Journal of American History, and a chapter in the anthology The New, New South (University Press of Florida, 2012). He is the recipient of the E.B. and Jean Smith prize for best dissertation in political history and his research has been funded through postdoctoral fellowships with Southern Methodist University, Case Western Reserve University, and Rutgers University. In 2017, he was a research fellow at the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut. As a public intellectual, his work on the history of prison and policing reform and state violence has been featured on national media programs through radio, newspapers, and television (MSNBC, CNN, and NPR, Newsweek, Washington Post).

Presenter: Sarah Haley, University of California, Los Angeles

Presenter: Kelly Lytle Hernández, University of California, Los Angeles

Presenter: Jen Manion, Amherst College

Presenter: Stuart Schrader, Johns Hopkins University

Presenter: Heather Ann Thompson, University of Michigan