Terms and slogans abound in contemporary thinking about the prison system. It has become commonplace to hear about mass incarceration, the carceral state, defunding the police, prison reform, and prison abolition. Yet even while the prison system impacts the lives of many Americans, many others view it from a distance, imagining incarceration as something that happens to other people.
In a wide-ranging conversation, Vassar College professor Dr. Jasmine Syedullah will discuss the emergence and development of carceral culture in the United States, demonstrating how it impacts even those Americans who believe themselves apart from it. This conversation will raise the questions: is our contemporary carceral culture necessary? And if not, what alternatives might exist?
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About the Speaker
Jasmine Syedullah is a theorist of abolitionist movement scholarship as well as co-author of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation (North Atlantic Books, 2016). She joined the faculty of Vassar College in 2019 and holds the Africana Studies Programs's first Assistant Professor line there. In the classroom, she shapes interdisciplinary Prison Studies curricula and engaged-learning opportunities to help students chart the effects of carceral culture through social theory, poverty scholarship, and somatic literacy. Her current book project bridges traditions of anti-slavery and prison abolition to reckon with the questions of political time, truancy, and mastery that live on through the works and witness of Ms. Harriet Jacobs's 1861 abolitionist narrative.
Before returning to the lands of the Lenape on the east coast, Dr. Syedullah taught at the University of San Francisco and the University of California Santa Cruz where she completed her PhD in Politics with designated emphasis in Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness. In addition to book chapter contributions in a number of anthologies, her research is published in Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International; Abolition: A Journal of Insurgent Politics; The Journal of Contemporary Political Theory; Society and Space; Tricycle: The Buddhist Review; and Truthout.
Off campus, Dr Sy, as she is affectionately called, is a certified yoga teacher, a mindfulness instructor, and social justice facilitator steeped in over twenty years of embodied contemplative practice community, social movement communities, and wisdom teachings passed down to shake up, break down, and transform the rights of heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, nationalism, and carceral culture to author narratives of safety in the places we call home.
About the Series
American Imagination Online is a series of virtual presentations by a scholar or subject matter expert about an important civic or cultural issue
About Humanities New York
Founded in 1975, Humanities New York (HNY) is the sole statewide proponent of public access to the humanities in New York State. HNY uses dialogue, reflection, and critical thinking through grants and programs to empower New Yorkers and the statewide cultural sector. HNY is the only statewide grant-maker dedicated to funding public facing humanities projects, in addition to creating original programming to increase public awareness of, access to, and support for the humanities.
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