Suggested class case studies will include examples covering the following five main thematic areas: 

Theme I: Self-Expression and Self-Reflection: How the visual arts can be used as a form of self-expression and to better internalize one’s own human rights and help shape public policy. This also includes examining art and artistic practices which have healing, emotional and transformative effects on ourselves, in relationship to incarceration. This will also include an exploration of formerly incarcerated visual artists who have created art as a response to the human rights violations within the carceral systems. Examples include: artwork focusing on mass incarceration, racial justice, and racial policing (e.g. artwork created out of the Black Lives Matter movement within the United States), etc. and artwork created by and centers the stories of directly impacted community members.

Theme II: Commemoration and Memorialization: How human rights atrocities (and the ending of atrocities) are memorialized and/or commemorated through the visual arts, in efforts to heal and provide closure to the trauma from the past from racial injustice throughout the United States. Examples include: artwork focusing on the history of enslaved peoples (e.g. the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the dismantling of Confederate monuments), etc. 

Theme III: Human Rights Iconography and Imagery: How certain human rights images have been popularized by iconic public art works, across movements, and throughout various social justice campaigns and how these images have shaped and challenged public perceptions around policing and mass incarceration. This also includes a deeper examination of when art within and from movements becomes commodified or co-opted by larger corporations and institutions, including across social media. Examples include: the Hands Up, Don’t Shoot imagery used by Damon Davis, etc. What does it mean to use the arts to envision a new world where all people are free? 

Theme IV: Decriminalization of Public Art: This includes an exploration of advocacy and abolitionist measures that can be taken in order to decriminalize public and street art within communities, along with an analysis of public space and what it means for members of a community to take ownership over public spaces through the visual arts. Examples include: Maria Gaspar’s 96 Acres Project. 

Theme V: Advocacy and Activation: How the visual arts can be used to convey a message and/or activate communities for policy change. This includes an examination of artwork that inspires and is used within abolitionist organizing efforts. Part of this thematic area will also center art that invites a reimagining of a world without prisons, jail, or police. Examples include: work by formerly incarcerated community members and leaders including Russell Craig, Jesse Krimes, et al. and also a deep examination of Dr. Nicole Fleetwood’s Marking Time: Art in the Era of Mass Incarceration. 

Some core questions that will be explored in this course include: 

• What are the connections between the aesthetics of art and the effects it has on one’s capacity to self-reflect, transform, and process one’s interactions with mass incarceration and the criminal injustice system? 
• In what ways does art affect or help create policy changes around mass incarceration? Must art always be responsible for creating concrete policy change within movements? How is this impact measured, if at all? 
• In what ways can art be used as a tool within abolitionist organizing spaces? What are concrete examples of grassroots organizations who have successfully used art across their many campaigns?
• How do artists, especially those directly impacted by the carceral state, use art as a mechanism for coping, healing, and processing the destructive and violent nature of the criminal justice, and other interlinking, systems? 
• Can art affect our language, especially the language we use to describe community members formerly and currently part of, or directly impacted by, the mass incarceration system? How can we use art to transform this language? 
• Is it possible to create spaces for artists to safely create art in their communities, without being criminalized? If so, what do these spaces look like and what measures need to be taken to create these spaces? 
• In what ways can community members use art to transform their own communities into abolitionist spaces? What does an abolitionist space actually look like and who is responsible for creating these spaces?