POL S 555 A: American Politics Topics

This course examines the bounds of citizenship and methods of exclusion in the US as well as other comparative contexts. Our primary focus is on the legal, political and coercive mechanisms employed to expand and restrict rights of citizenship, both historically and in contemporary political life. While we will investigate various mechanisms of incorporating and excluding politically marginalized groups, the readings will emphasize the use of racial, gendered and state violence, including lynching, incarceration, sexual subordination, militarization and aggressive immigration control. Our goal is to identify the ways in which laws interact with private and state violence to maintain the political and economic order, preserve patriarchal values and uphold racial hierarchies. As an overarching question, we will consider when political violence is a means to exploit cheap, surplus labor, acquire new territory or preserve the status of the male breadwinner, and when political violence becomes a process of extermination. Throughout the course we will consider diverse modes of resistance and contestation, as well as alternative trajectories and possibilities.