Race, Empire, Gender, and the Making of the US Carceral State

AHA Session 215
Saturday, January 7, 2023: 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Washington Room C (Loews Philadelphia Hotel, 3rd Floor)
Chair:
Robert T. Chase, State University of New York at Stony Brook
Papers:
The Carceral Capital: Race and Incarceration in Antebellum Washington, DC
Luke Frederick, Georgetown University
The Deep North: Spaces of Indigenous Confinement
Balraj Gill, Harvard University
Reforming Women, Reshaping the Carceral State: A Public–Private Partnership in World War I New Orleans
Erica Lally, Georgetown University
“Women in Prison”: The Gendered Environment of the Alderson Federal Prison Camp, c. 1928–60
Donna Truglio Haverty-Stacke, Hunter College, City University New York, and Graduate Center, City University of New York
Comment:
The Audience

Session Abstract

The study of the American carceral state often focuses on the second half of the 20th Century, but the origins of the U.S. carceral state lie earlier. Focusing on the period between 1850 and 1950, this session examines the experiences of several different populations - Black Americans, Indigenous peoples, sex workers, and women - who were the targets of the emerging carceral system. Considering questions of race, empire, and gender, this session examines how those in authority used carceral systems to define and maintain power and how the targeted populations resisted these efforts to control them.
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