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Course Info for RELG - 326 - 01, Spring 2025
Class number: 2886 Title: Religion and Prisons Department: Religious Studies
Career: Undergraduate Component: Seminar Session: Regular
Instructor's Permission Required: No Grading Basis: Regular Units: 1.00
Enrollment limited to 19 Current enrollment: 8 Available seats: 11
Start date: Tuesday, January 21, 2025 End date: Friday, May 9, 2025 Mode of Instruction: In Person
Schedule: MW: 1:30PM-2:45PM, AAC - 231 Instructor(s): Ribovich, Leslie
Prerequisite(s): None
Distribution Requirement: Meets Humanities & Identity Power Equity Req
Course Description:
Protestant reformers started American prisons as a benevolent alternative to torture. Christian morality still underlies American laws of repentance-even the name penitentiary comes from religion. Yet, in our era of mass incarceration, America incarcerates more people than any other country, disproportionately imprisoning people of color. This course conceives of incarceration broadly to ask: whom do we punish and why? Whom does the American state consider worth saving and how? And, what can religion nevertheless offer people who are incarcerated? Sources include a court case against evangelical reform programs, poetry from the Japanese American incarceration, and visionary fiction for prison abolition.