On Anarchism and Prison Abolition

Semester: 

Spring

Offered: 

2024

Walter Johnson (Department of History and Department of African and African American Studies)
First-Year Seminar 73I      4 credits 

This seminar will introduce students to some classic texts in the history of anarchist political philosophy (Garrison, Tolstoy, Kropotkin, Bakunin) and then follow those threads of thought forward to the history of the prison abolition movement in the United States.  Doing so will involve attending to both the influence of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century anarchists (especially Emma Goldman and Lucy Parsons) and the ways that their thought and practice – even when not explicitly identified as “anarchist”—has shaped recent movements such as Occupy and especially Prison Abolition.

See also: Spring 2024