GI431 Half Unit
Abolition and Anticarceral Feminisms
This information is for the 2025/26 session.
Course Convenor
Dr SM Rodriguez
Availability
This course is available on the MSc in Gender, MSc in Gender (Rights and Human Rights), MSc in Gender (Sexuality), MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation, MSc in Gender, Media and Culture and MSc in Gender, Peace and Security. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process.
Students should apply by 10am UK time on Friday 26 September 2025. Offers will be made after 10am on this date and will continue until all places are filled.
Priority is given to home department students and then to those who have the course listed in their programme regulations who apply in the first 24-hours (by 10:00am, Friday 26 September 2025), space permitting. Please note the timing of your request within the first 24-hours will not impact chances of being accepted onto the course. Requests received after this timeframe, or outside option requests, will be allocated randomly if space remains.
Please do not email the Course Convenor with personal expressions of interest as these are not required and do not influence who is offered a place. Contact gender@lse.ac.uk with any queries.
Requisites
Assumed prior knowledge:
Introductory knowledge of critical criminological perspectives
Course content
This course centers around the critical feminist inquiry: are prisons obsolete? The class will focus on the history, growth, and current functioning of global systems of stratification, surveillance, and segregation/detention with the critical goal of questioning the future of such carceral structures. The course begins with the iconic book, Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis and foundational anticarceral feminist examinations. The texts for the course intersect with several fields, including Geography, History, Africana Studies, and Critical Disability Studies. Through transnational, decolonial and interdisciplinary exploration, students are introduced to a range of sites and strategies of carceral and anticarceral feminisms and exposed to methods of scholarly interrogation and analysis. The course introduces justice-based terminologies and political philosophies, and outlines various justice models such as retributive, rehabilitative, restorative, incapacitative, and transformative justice.
Teaching
30 hours of workshops in the Winter Term.
This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.
Formative assessment
Students will be expected to produce 1 reflection essay (1,000 words) in the WT.
Indicative reading
- Ben-Moshe, Liat. 2020. Decarcerating disability: Deinstitutionalization and prison abolition. U of Minnesota Press.
- Bernstein, Elizabeth. 2012. "Carceral politics as gender justice? The “traffic in women” and neoliberal circuits of crime, sex, and rights." Theory and society 41: 233-259.
- Davis, Angela Y. 2011. Are prisons obsolete?. Seven stories press.
- Davis, Angela Y., Gina Dent, Erica Meiners, and Beth Richie. 2022. Abolition. Feminism. Now, London: Hamish Hamilton.
- Rodriguez, S. M. 2022. Forging Black Safety in the Carceral Diaspora: Perverse Criminalization, Sexual Corrections, and Connection-Making in a Death World. Social Justice, 49(3), 97-113.
- Tapia Tapia, Silvana. 2022. Feminism, Violence Against Women, and Law Reform: Decolonial Lessons from Ecuador. Routledge.
- Thuma, Emily L. 2019. All our trials: Prisons, policing, and the feminist fight to end violence. University of Illinois Press.
- Walia, Harsha. 2021. Border and rule: Global migration, capitalism, and the rise of racist nationalism. Haymarket Books.
Assessment
Proposal (100%) in Spring Term Week 1
The research proposal consists of three parts:
- Epistemological Reflection – 1,500-word written piece, reflecting on a selection of readings alongside social context or personal standpoint
- Site of Analysis (Case or Policy) – poster presentation, 1,000-word written piece, or a documentary video roughly 10 minutes in length
- Proposed Method of Study – 500-word review of methodological and ethical considerations
Key facts
Department: Gender Studies
Course Study Period: Winter Term
Unit value: Half unit
FHEQ Level: Level 7
CEFR Level: Null
Keywords: criminology, disability, migration, coloniality, feminism
Total students 2024/25: 17
Average class size 2024/25: 17
Controlled access 2024/25: NoCourse selection videos
Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.
Personal development skills
- Leadership
- Self-management
- Team working
- Problem solving
- Application of information skills
- Communication
- Specialist skills