Scholars have also focused on untangling the reasons for and consequences of the carceral state’s dramatic expansion during the twentieth century. Yet these two dominant approaches have stymied the carceral state’s historiography by obscuring the multiple histories of penal law beyond U.S. borders.

This panel investigates the global dimensions of the carceral state from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. By shifting the focus from a U.S.-centered framework, the panelists explore the historical convergences and divergences in how different countries have utilized incarceration as a key element of their carceral states. Together, the papers explore how prisons are never as isolated and self-sufficient as commonly presumed, but rather are products of penal knowledge circulation across nations and temporalities.

This interdisciplinary panel seeks to generate conversation between historians and literature scholars who are interested in the larger political context of incarceration and how states use carceral institutions to conform bodies to their political, social, cultural, and economic beliefs. Yamaguti Norek examines the architectural design and construction of São Paulo’s House of Correction compared to New York's Auburn Prison, arguing that the failed adaptation of the penitentiary system and design reflects broader conceptual and structural flaws in Brazil’s carceral project. By tracing these tensions between discourse and practice, she highlights how São Paulo’s first penitentiary mirrored rather than reformed the structures of its society—where slavery remained central until 1888—complicating the narratives of penal modernization in nineteenth-century Brazil. Kershner examines the feedback loops between military and civilian prison systems, revealing how violent outbreaks in U.S. military prisons during the Vietnam War spawned tactical innovations in riot response. As some of the military’s most experienced jailers left the armed forces at war’s end to take leadership roles in civilian corrections, they encouraged the adoption of military technology and know-how, such as militarized riot squads and violent maneuvers like cell extractions, still widely used today. Nichols compares different instances of self-destruction––hunger strikes, suicides, self-mutilation––in global spaces of incarceration like migrant detention centers. Doing visual and spatial analysis, he argues these kinds of actions make their practitioners (and arguably all incarcerated peoples) more distinct against a physical and political carceral landscape that attempts to absorb them, challenging the carceral state's preferred image of its detainees.

Finally, this panel will benefit from commentary by historian Dr. Toussaint Losier, who has published extensively on prisons, policing, and the prison movement in the 20th century. Ultimately, the papers broadly explore the circulation of carceral knowledge between nations and across temporalities. In doing so, they shed light on previously hidden connections between carceral practices in different parts of the world.