This interdisciplinary course considers issues of gender, race, sexuality, and class in the context of youth justice. Drawing on gender and sexuality studies, criminal justice and sociological literature, social critiques, policy papers, case law, documentary film, personal narrative, and literature, SWG 211 critically examines the history of the youth justice system in the United States, what it means to be in “the system”; the role of “justice” in the system; and: its major challenges, reformist and abolitionist critiques, and how girls—and young people of all genders--contest its confines, agents of resistance and change.
Our work together will explore the following questions, among others:
What are the lineages of “girls” in the criminal and juvenile legal systems, and how are these histories implicated in the present? What are the goals of these systems, whose interest(s) do they serve, and (how) do these yield gendered and racialized consequences? What role do related systems, processes, and institutions (such as immigration enforcement, foster care, and education) play in youth justice? How have movement, legal, and policy interventions influenced and shaped its trajectories? How do youth of all genders who are subject to the system contest its confines, demonstrating voice, vision, and agency? What other worlds are possible? Is reform in the interests of justice actionable, or is abolition the only way?
- Instructor: Adina Giannelli
