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A multidisciplinary exploration of the justifications and problems associated with punishment broadly defined, including prison sentences, personal acts of revenge, and military reprisals. Course texts will include international court cases, philosophical texts, and classic legal thinkers, in addition to fiction and news articles. Particular attention will be paid to when punishment is (or is not) cruel, deserved, or proportionate; when restraint should be shown; and whether it is desirable to abolish it altogether. Case studies will include the practice of solitary confinement, cycles of retaliatory violence in communal conflicts, the death penalty, and International Criminal Court efforts to punish perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Writing intensive.