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The United States in 2018 held more than two million people behind bars, and each year it imprisons more people per capita than any other nation in the world. Understood in terms of “mass incarceration,” a “new Jim Crow,” or “carceral capitalism,” scholars and activists have come increasingly to characterize contemporary U.S. society in light of these facts. Despite this, there has been only sporadic attention within literary studies to the prison as a driving force in American literature, even as canonical works in world literature, from Antigone to Les Misérables to Native Son, feature prominent prison plots. This course in American literature aims to examine how writers, both within and beyond the walls of the prison, have responded to the shifting role of incarceration in the U.S. We will read examples of both “prison literature” and literature that thematizes the prison as an institution across the period of explosive growth in imprisoned populations in the U.S. We will ask what kinds of writing—what genres, moods, styles, and forms—emerge from experiences of incarceration and the literary history of its representation. And we will investigate how a focus on the history of the prison might reshape readings in American literature. Finally, we will consider the role of writing and reading in political struggles against racism, militarism, and heteropatriarchy in the U.S. By developing a critical account of the prison through the kaleidoscope of literature, we will look to develop tools to better understand a central feature of contemporary social life in the U.S. Authors covered may include: Chester Himes, Malcolm X, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Audre Lorde, Piper Kerman, Mohamedu Ould Slahi, and Colson Whitehead, among others.