Professor: Tobin Hansen

4.00 Credits

• CRN 32216: Tuesday & Thursday, 2:00-3:20 PM @ CHA 202

This course explores exclusions and expulsions from the United States in historical and contemporary social and political contexts. Our examination of the logics of and mechanisms for excluding and expelling “undesirable” populations provides an entrée into three central inquiries: Who belongs? How is belonging regulated? And what are the consequences of expulsion? These questions illuminate the course’s concern with the U.S. government’s increasingly robust deportation machinery and its effects on communities and individuals. We will bring into focus coercive technologies whereby people are identified, apprehended, and expelled and consider how social identities such as race, gender, class, and nationality shape social and legal belonging.

This writing-intensive course takes a humanistic social scientific approach to belonging and removal, engaging ideas from anthropology, sociology, philosophy, human geography, history, and political science. It traces the influence of criminalization, race, and deportation on membership in and exclusion, from the English colonies through the contemporary United States, and explores the aftermath of deportation. It also considers philosophical frameworks for outlining notions of belonging in and banishment from social and political communities.