Assignments and Grading

Your grade will be calculated as follows:

• 30% class participation (this includes blog posts, quizzes, and other forms of participation)
• 20% two short essays
• 20% take-home midterm exam
• 30% take-home final exam

Note: All assignments must be completed to receive a passing grade in the course.

The electric chair was supposed to illustrate the advanced technology of the 19th century. To many observers, the invisible power of electricity seemed to be a sublime and divine force. Reprinted in Harper’s Weekly, February 25, 1988.

#RelPolt

Whether it’s the Trump Administration’s travel ban or churches trying to shield people from deportation, the themes of this course are often relevant to current events in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. Each student in the course will create an account on Twitter and tweet about current events relating to the course using the hashtag #RelPolt. We will often begin class by discussing the news and our tweets about it. Each student should share at least 5 articles before the end of the semester.

Blog Posts

Throughout the semester, you will write four blog posts, each due before the start of class. These 250-400 word posts should be written informally and posts are due by the start of the relevant class or section meeting. The blog posts are designed to help you prepare for discussion and to provide a forum for you to write informally. They should include your response to the readings: What do you have questions about? What confused or interested you? How do themes in recent readings relate to topics we studied earlier in the course.

Quizzes

Weeks without other assignments will entail short quizzes (5-6 minutes) at the beginning of class. These quizzes are graded generously and serve two functions: 1) they help ensure that all participants read the materials before class and 2) they help guide your studying and learning by highlighting the most important questions and themes of the course. The goal setting assignment due through Canvas before the second day of class is assessed as a quiz for grading purposes.

Short Essays

Two short essays, between 800-1100 words, will follow units on the Disciplinary Prison and on the Policing of Religious and Racial Pluralism during the Cold War. Prompts and instructions for these essays will be distributed in class.

Exams

Take-home midterm and final exams will consist of short answer identification questions that will help you organize and retain the key thematic ideas, three to five slightly longer form questions to be answered in a paragraph, and one (for the midterm) or two (for the final) short essays asking you to synthesize your knowledge. The exams will be based closely on the assigned texts and discussions from class. In addition to review, the best way to prepare for them is to keep up with the reading, actively participate in class discussions, and review the material covered in the quizzes.

In the 1960s, religious groups promoted rehabilitation programs by emphasizing that former prisoners were “sinners like you and me.” Pamphlets from St. Leonard’s House, ca. 1965, Box A664, Archives of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.

Wednesday, August 29: Goal Setting Assignment Due before Class.

• Katherine Grandjean, “‘Our Fellow-Creatures & our Fellow-Christians’: Race and Religion in Eighteenth-Century Narratives of Indian Crime,” American Quarterly 62, No. 4 (December 2010), 925-950.

• Nathan Strong, A Sermon Preached in Hartford, June 10th, 1797, at the Execution of Richard Doane (Hartford: Elisha Babcock, 1797). A PDF of the original printing is available on Canvas. A transcription is available here.

• Bob Marley and the Wailers, “Keep on Moving” (1977).

A depiction of a hanging in New England, courtesy of the New England Historical Society.

Wednesday, September 5

• Michel Foucault, “Torture,” in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 1979).
• Handout for Blog Post #1 Distributed in Class.

Monday, September 10 (Rosh Hashana): Blog Post #1 Due before Class.

• Michel Foucault, “The Means of Correct Training” and “Panopticism” in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 1979).

• Theme song: The Police, “Every Breath You Take” (1983).

Wednesday, September 12

• Jennifer Graber, “Prison as Garden” in The Furnace of Affliction: Prisons and Religion in Antebellum America (Durham, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).
• Board of Managers of the Prison Discipline Society, First Annual Report (1826), p. 5-6, 8 (on Solitary Confinement), 54-60, and 77-78.
• Recommended Michael Ignatieff, “Pentonville” in A Just Measure of Pain (New York: Pantheon, 1978).
• First essay assignment distributed and discussed in class.
• Theme song: The Tallest Man on Earth, “The Gardener” (2008).

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday September 12-14

• Meet 1-on-1 to discuss your essay, due the following week.

Monday, September 17

• David E. Aune, “Repentance,” Encyclopedia of Religion, Lindsay Jones, ed. 2nd Edition (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005), 7755-7760.

• Atul Gawande, “Hellhole,” The New Yorker (March 30, 2009).

• Recommended: Charles Dickens, “Chapter VII: Philadelphia, and Its Solitary Prison,” in American Notes for General Circulation (London: Chapman & Hall, Ltd., 1913),

Criminalization, Racism, and Social Control

Wednesday, September 19:

• Film: 13th, Ava DuVernay (Netflix, 2013).

First Short Essay Due on Canvas at 6pm Friday, September 21.

Monday, September 24

• Victor Rios, Preface and Chapter 4, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (New York University Press, 2011).

• Theme song: Public Enemy, “Public Enemy No. 1” (1987).

At Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, the administration forced prisoners to wear masks if they moved out of their cells as part of an effort to prevent prisoners from being identified. Courtesy of Eastern State Historic Site.

Solitude and isolation were believed to facilitate penitence and reform. Courtesy of Eastern State Historic Site.

Wednesday, September 26

• Christopher H. Evans, “Introduction”, in The Social Gospel in American Religion: A History (New York: New York University Press, 2017).

• William T. Stead, “Preface [to the American Version],” and “In Harrison Street Police Station,” in If Christ Came to Chicago! (London: Review of Reviews, 1894).

• Worth a look but not required: Matthew Bowman, “Sin, Spirituality and Primitivism: The Theologies of the American Social Gospel, 1885-1917,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 17, no. 1, (2007), especially pages 95-102.

• Theme song: Madonna, Material Girl (1984).

Campaigns against “vice” defined many aspects of urban American life during the Progressive Era.

Monday October 22

• Kevin Kruse, “Introduction,” in One Nation Under God (New York: Basic Books, 2015).

• Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay on American Religious Sociology (New York: Anchor Books, 1955), 247-262.

• Primary Source Analysis: Civil Religion in Cold War-Era Parole Reports and Prison Correspondence. [Details distributed in class.]

• Theme song: Vampire Weekend, “Ya Hey” (2014) ***

Wednesday, October 24

• Kathryn Gin Lum and Lerone A. Martin, “American Religion and the Rise of Internal Security: A Prologue,” in The FBI and Religion: Faith and National Security Before and After 9/11, ed., Sylvester A. Johnson and Steven Weitzman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017).

• Dianne Kirby, “J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI, and the Religious Cold War,” in The FBI and Religion, ed., Sylvester A. Johnson and Steven Weitzman.

• Song: Raymond J. Mauer, “Duck and Cover” (1951).

Monday, October 29

• Lerone Martin, “Bureau Clergyman: How the FBI Colluded with an African American Televangelist to Destroy Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation, Winter Vol.28, No. 1 (2018).

• Recommended: Annette Gordon-Reed, “MLK: What We Lost,” New York Review of Books (November 8, 2018)

• Song: Elder Lightfoot Solomon Michaux & Congregation, “Happy Am I” (ca. 1950).

Prisoners at Attica State Prison in 1971 participate in a negotiation session. Associated Press.

Wednesday, October 31

• Michelle Alexander, “Introduction,” The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2012).

• Peter Wagner and Wendy Sawyer, Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie, Prison Policy Intiative, March 2018.

• Song: Leadbelly, “Jim Crow Blues” (1930).

Monday, November 5 Blog Post #3 Due at 10 pm on November 4.

• Garrett Felber, “Shades of Mississippi: The Nation of Islam’s Prison Organizing, the Carceral State, and the Black Freedom Struggle,” Journal of American History (July 2018).
• Suggested/supplemental listening: Interview with Garrett Felber, Journal of American History Podcast (June 2018).
• Skype Q&A with Garrett Felber.

Wednesday, November 7

• James Forman, Jr., Fresh Air Interview (July 17, 2017)

• John Pfaff, Waylaid by a Metaphor: A Deeply Problematic Account of Prison Growth, Michigan Law Review 111, No. 6, (2013), 1087-1110. [On Canvas.]

• Song: Tupac Shakur, “Trapped” (1991)

Monday, November 12

• Michelle Alexander, Facebook Post, September 15, 2016.
• Guest speaker: Joshua Saleem, Peace Education Director, American Friends Service Committee.

Wednesday, November 14

• Winnifred Sullivan, “The God Pod,” in Prison Religion: Faith-Based Reform and the Constitution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).
• Kathryn Schultz, “From the White House to the Jailhouse to the Pulpit: Chuck Colson on Being Wrong,” Slate (October 20, 2010) [Interview with Chuck Colson.]

After converting in prison, former Nixon aide and Watergate conspirator Chuck Colson established Prison Fellowship. The organization promotes prison ministry and advocates for criminal justice reform. Colson died in 2012. Courtesy of Prison Fellowship.