Course Descriptions

Professor WELCH, Section 01, Crime in Film:  Scholarly interest in criminal justice and criminology has taken a cultural turn over the past several decades, producing an array of innovative approaches, viewpoints, and sites of analysis. Among them is film. Indeed, images and messages infused in cinema have given moviegoers a rich vocabulary about lawbreaking and punishment. So much so that crime discourse often enters into a realm of imagination that transcends the empirical world. The course maps out significant ways in which crime is depicted in film and how it shapes our perceptions and emotions. In keeping with a cultural sociology of crime, lectures, discussion and writing assignments are geared toward critique and theoretical interpretation.

Professor LIEBELL, Section 02, Reproduction & the Supreme Court: From the 1910s-1970s, American states sterilized over 10,000 people against their will. While some states refused to sterilize, others forced people based on social class, disability, neurodiversity, sexual identity, sexual activity, gender, race, or immigration status. The Supreme Court endorsed these sterilizations. The Court did not discuss whether “liberty” covers the body but declared that state governments had the power to sterilize because declaring that “one generation of idiots is enough.” Forced sterilization was not a crime but a desired public policy. In the 1950s and 1960s, the United States government was implicated in the mass sterilization of women in Puerto Rico. In the 1970s, Latina women in California were coerced into being sterilized - but courts did not see a violation of their rights. Legislatures, however, revised the definition of crime and expanded protections for the body. In the 21^st century, do governments have the power to criminalize reproduction, birth control, abortion, miscarriage, or gender transition? This course considers the changing opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) with an emphasis on race and gender. It includes a SCOTUS simulation (moot court) in which students act as justices and attorneys. 

Professor SHERIDAN, Section 80, Criminological Controversies Past & Present: Criminological controversies are widespread, at times pervasive, and often confusing because of input from criminologists (the theoretical perspectives and empirical and qualitative), criminological practitioners (which includes law enforcement and corrections to dispute the operational necessities), politicians, and the media (who generally promote the most extreme, extraordinary and the unusual without recognizing the presence of the ordinary and common.  Defining crime is no longer the province of legal wrangling, but includes input from the sources named above to also attempt to determine the nature of crime and its prevention. Among the questions this course seeks to address is the “what”, “Why”, “How”, and the “consequences” of what becomes criminalized and its impact on society.  The challenge for this course is to understand the effort to control deviant/criminal behavior, and the effort to delineate what is fair and whether the moral high ground is attained.