New Carceral Histories – Panel Debrief from the 2024 OAH Conference on American History

The Journal of American History

This special panel debrief edition of the Journal of American History Podcast features a conversation on "New Carceral Histories: Legacies of Punishment before the Era of Mass Incarceration," held at the 2024 OAH Conference on American History.

In this panel, Maile Arvin, Abigail Kahn, Halee Robinson, Derek Taira, and Walter Stern continue their important conversation about ethics and violence in historical research, generated from the papers they presented on this panel. These works critically consider both how we conceive of the carceral state and the purposes of punishment in the era prior to mass incarceration—to extract labor, to assimilate, to destroy kinship ties, and to construct the boundaries of who belongs in the United States empire. Besides providing a temporally distinct perspective, these works unite historiographical traditions that are often siloed—histories of incarceration, colonialism, and education—and, in doing so, highlight the interdependence of the penal system, American empire, and formal schooling in defining and enforcing the boundaries of belonging in American society. By being in service to disenfranchised voices in history, and highlighting the interconnectedness of incarceration, education, and colonialism, this panel seeks to inform and recast current debates on incarceration and abolitionism.

This panel was endorsed by the OAH Committee on the Status of ALANA Historians and ALANA Histories, OAH–JAAS Collaborative Committee, WHA, and SHGAPE.

Read more about the session here: https://www.oah.org/conferences/oah24/sessions/session/?id=5220

Music: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band's Mabel's Dream, 1923

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