Through engagement with rich state and local archives, this course will use several case studies to examine how Connecticut’s carceral practices have made and re-made the state’s legacy of slavery and policed the borders of accepted gender and sexuality in this place nicknamed “the land of steady habits.” The Middlesex County Historical Society’s rich collection of late-19th and early-20th-century Middletown police logs, county jail records, and police court proceedings will enable students to analyze on-the-ground carceral practices in Connecticut. The Connecticut State Archives’ extensive state penitentiary records, pardon petitions, and other state-level records will enrich and contextualize the local picture in Middletown.