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This course investigates the roots of the American police, and its impact on people and place. Political theorist Markus Dubber calls police the “most expansive, most amorphous of governmental powers.” Policing is a key component of state power, but the current web of police institutions was never inevitable. In studying the deliberate creation of the police, we will pay particular attention to race-class hierarchies in the historical and contemporary carceral state. We will struggle through questions on safety, freedom, repression, and political power, such as: How did a country founded on principles of radical republicanism develop vast institutions of patrol and surveillance? Under what conditions do police powers expand or contract? And what contributes to safety in America? This course will first, look at the historic roots of American police. The next section of the course attempts to analyze how or when these institutions intervene in the lives of Americans. Next, we will study police from the perspective of policed populations and think about what impact these interactions have on American democracy and belonging. Through studying police and prisons, students will learn about an important face of the American state and how certain state functions are differentially distributed along lines of race and class.