Academic Calendar 2015/2016 - Race, Law and Violence

GEND 2516  Race, Law and Violence

Prerequisites:

Any 18 credits completed.

Antirequisites:

GEND 3056 if taken before Fall 2014

Hours:

Three hours of lecture per week for one term.

Credits:

3

Description:

This course examines the relation between violence, race and law. Emphasizing law's response to various cases of individual, collective and state violence, the course critically explores the nature of racialized violence, its gendered and economic dimensions, its historical roots in colonialism and slavery, and its connection to the contemporary 'war on terror'. Some of the critical questions explored are: What does law's response to racialized violence teach us about how racial power operates in society and everyday life today? Does law itself, ever perpetuate race inequality? What is our own role in racialized violence and how might we strategize for social change? Drawn from national and international contexts, case studies may include racial profiling, the war on terror, murder trials of racialized victims or racialized suspects, missing/murdered Indigenous women; Indigenous deaths in police custody, the over incarceration of Black Americans, Indigenous people, and people of color, and legal regress for historic state injustice against racialized groups.