This course examines media practices in the context of Black Lives Matter, police violence, and criminal justice reform. What are the ethics of mass broadcasting videos of police murders? Who is seen as an “expert” on policing and mass incarceration? This course nests contemporary questions in historical and institutional context, beginning with nineteenth-century racial criminalization and the norms of profit-based mass media. This course is interdisciplinary, drawing on scholarship from history, media studies, social psychology, and the politics of racism, crime, and punishment.
