This course examines the history of policing in the United States, beginning with its 19th-century origins, modeled after the practices in England, and continuing to the contemporary moment. We shall investigate the theory and practice of policing in a number of domains and from different perspectives. These include examining the origins of the surveillance state and the creation of the FBI, the militarization of police forces, the role and experiences of Black police officers, and the complex relation of policing to social movements and issues of racial justice. The class concludes with a discussion of the Federal Government’s response, in the form of commissions to the systemic issues surrounding policing. (Photo copyright: Philipp Baer)

This course examines the changing place of guns in U.S. society, from the colonial era through to the present day. Readings and discussions consider guns both as material objects involved in specific ways of life and as symbols and sites of contested meaning in American culture. Projects explore how guns have been, and remain, intimately involved with questions of race, gender, class, labor, capital, war, resistance, repression, vigilantism and ideas of freedom and self-defense. Special emphasis is placed on student research in local archives and museums in the Connecticut River Valley, the nation’s historical gun manufacturing center.