FREN 4726

FREN 4726

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2016-2017.

Punitive Society examines the phenomena of mass incarceration and the death penalty as represented in philosophy, law, literature and film.  We will address the genealogy of punishment, the absence of a philosophically rigorous Abolitionist argument in the Western tradition and the racial politics of the carceral system (what Michelle Alexander has called, "the new Jim Crow,") Have literature and film provided more pertinent critiques of incarceration and the death penalty? We will focus on the U.S. and France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as our cases. Texts will include works by theorists Cesare Beccaria, Rousseau, Kant, Foucault, Derrida, Camus, Robert Badinter, Michelle Alexander, Loic Wacquant; writers Victor Hugo, Albert French, Ernest Gaines, Jean Genet; and filmmakers: Robert Bresson, Lars von Trier, Ozu, Fritz Lang.

When Offered Fall.

Distribution Category (CA-AS)

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Syllabi: none
  •   Regular Academic Session.  Combined with: GOVT 4726

  • 4 Credits Stdnt Opt

  • 17308 FREN 4726   SEM 101

  • Government seniors and juniors given preference. This course fulfills the government senior seminar requirement.