Education Studies 269 - Children Behind Bars: Education, Incarceration, and Deportation

(Offered as AMST-269 and EDST-269) Adolescents in maximum security prisons? Immigrant families separated and children incarcerated in detention centers? How did we get here? This course explores the history of state intervention into indigenous, Black, and Latinx households from the mid-nineteenth century until the present day. We focus on the experiences of Native American children in residential boarding schools, African American and Latinx children in Jim Crow youth reformatories, and Latinx children in immigrant detention centers. The institutions are part of a broader history of punitive state intervention into families and communities of color that shaped childhood for the most vulnerable.  The course introduces key concepts and case studies in the history of BIPOC children, crime, and punishment in the United States. Our guiding questions include: Who gets to have a childhood? How have the state and public defined childhood and juvenile delinquency? In what ways have the public, the state, and parents responded to children who deviated from traditional definitions of middle-class, white childhoods? How do race, class and gender shape the experiences of poor and working-class BIPOC children in the United States?"

Limited to 18 students.  Spring semester.  Professor del Moral.

How to handle overenrollment: Preference given to AMST and EDST students.

Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: We will do "close readings" of secondary literature. Students are expected to complete all class readings and prepare for class discussion.