WIGH Conference: "A History of Penal Regimes in Global Perspective, 1800-2014"

Date: 

Thursday, March 5, 2015 (All day) to Saturday, March 7, 2015 (All day)

Location: 

Tsai Auditorium, S010, CGIS South, 1737 Cambridge Street

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975), the influential book that first opened a new line of inquiry into the study of the prison, the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History is planning a conference to spark a global conversation among researchers in the social sciences and humanities at work on the history of distinctive penal regimes. We are interested in exploring the diversity of regimes of punishment, and especially the prison as an institution within them, the paths along which they changed, and—most especially—the connections between these changes in different parts of the world. The conference will present papers that address a variety of themes from the philosophical underpinnings of systems of punishment, the character and function of regimes of incarceration and penality in colonial, liberal, neo-liberal and authoritarian state systems, and the distinctive cultures of confinement that have emerged within these varied systems.

 Conference Convener: Lisa McGirr, Professor of History, Harvard University

 CONFERENCE PROGRAM (pdf)

 Sponsored by the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History, with support from the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies; the Department of African and African American Studies, Harvard University; the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University the Harvard University Asia Center; and the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University. 

Registration is limited, please pre-register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/global-history-of-penal-regimes-tickets-15358788550