Police Culture in the US 4219-SD0096
This course will engage students with police narratives in American audiovisual culture and literature in the 20th and 21st century.
The main goal of this course is to provide students with theoretical and analytical frameworks essential in police studies, which we will be using to examine police representation in American movies, TV shows, video games, and comics produced in 20th and 21st centuries. We will explore the themes of crime and criminal justice; the characterization of the cop and the criminal; the setting design of policed spaces such as the city, the countryside, airspace, and the digital world; as well as the function of policing in producing and preserving socioeconomic and sociopolitical order. To do so, we will conduct close readings of chosen primary texts through relevant secondary sources on policing. Specifically, we will examine police-related issues, such as police violence, racial policing, and policing as a protecting mechanism of capital order. Additionally, we will have a module dedicated to alternative forms of policing, including vigilantism, military power, and institutional policing.
Our primary lens of critique will be the concept called "copaganda," which will guide us in our close analyses of police-themed cultural products in the United States.
Course coordinators
Type of course
Mode
Prerequisites (description)
Learning outcomes
Knowledge:
- Student has a knowledge of culture and theory of American policing
- Student is able to define main concepts of Amnerican police culture and can apply them in critical analysis
- Student knows various functions and impact of policing in social, political and economic spheres and its cultural impact
Skills:
- Student can read/analyze police literature using criminological theory, philosophy, and cultural theory
- Student is able to analyze cultural texts critically
- Student develops skills to gather, select and structure information to defend one's position
Social competences:
- Student participates in group work and can arrange it skillfully
- Student develops various perspectives on the police culture and engage in it analytically and critically
- Student can use the knowledge in American police culture for the benefit of the social environment through entrepreneurial thinking and action
Assessment criteria
1. Cultural Text Analysis (20 pts)
2. Final Essay (45 pts)
3. Feedback to Class Readings (15 pts)
4. Attendance and active participation (20 pts)
Grading: 100-88/5; 87-73/4; 72-57/3; 56-0/2
Bibliography
Aladjem, Terry K. The Culture of Vengeance and the Fate of American Justice. Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. MIT Press, 2007.
Brown, Richard Maxwell. Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism. Oxford University Press, 1975.
Correia, David, and Tyler Wall. Police: A Field Guide. Verso, 2018.
Doyle, Aaron. “‘Cops’: Television Policing as Policing Reality.” In Entertaining Crime: Television Reality Programs, edited by Mark Fishman and Gray Cavender. Social Problems and Social Issues. Aldine de Gruyter, 1998.
Ferrell, Jeff, and Clinton R. Sanders, eds. Cultural Criminology. Northeastern University Press, 1995.
Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Zero Books, 2010.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Vintage Books, 1995.
Hatrick, Jessica, and Olivia González. “Watchmen, Copaganda, and Abolition Futurities in US Television.” Lateral 11, no. 2 (2022). https://doi.org/10.25158/L11.2.2.
Linnemann, Travis. The Horror of Police. University of Minnesota Press, 2022.
Mawby, Rob C. Policing Images: Policing, Communication and Legitimacy. Willan Pub, 2002.
Neocleous, Mark. War Power, Police Power. Edinburgh University Press, 2014.
Phillips, Nickie D, and Nicholas Chagnon. “From Defund to Refund the Police: The Hegemonic Rupture and Repair of Policing Logics.” Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal, ahead of print, SAGE Publications, December 21, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1177/17416590241306011.
Phillips, Nickie D., and Staci Strobl, eds. Comic Book Crime: Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Alternative Criminology Series. New York University Press, 2013.
Phillips, Nickie D., and Staci Strobl. “Cultural Criminology and Kryptonite: Apocalyptic and Retributive Constructions of Crime and Justice in Comic Books.” Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal 2, no. 3 (2006): 304–31. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741659006069573.
Wacquant, Loïc. Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Duke University Press, 2009.
Wilson, Christopher P. Cop Knowledge: Police Power and Cultural Narrative in Twentieth-Century America. University of Chicago Press, 2000.