Reading Group: The Criminalization of Black Resistance

This reading group will explore and interrogate state responses to black resistance in the Thirteen Colonies and the United States. Black resistance has taken various forms such as stealing away from Antebellum plantations to nonviolent direct action. The resistance centered in this reading group is black people’s ongoing physical rejection of slavers’ and state actors’ attempts to capture, arrest, and exert control over black bodies. Reading group discussions may center around topics such as the following: the continuity of racially subordinating policing and resistance thereto, the jurisgenerative dimensions of black resistance to state violence, and the jurispathic dimension of state responses to such black resistance.

Students can just email me ([email protected]) 1-3 paragraphs explaining their interest in the reading group and how they intend to contribute to the discussion by August 28, 2023.