This course examined the history of policing in the United States by considering the contexts and conflicts that birthed and shaped the modern carceral state, focused primarily on the late nineteenth century through the 1980s.

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.