Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
5-2019
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Program
Psychology
Advisor
Michelle Fine
Committee Members
Brett Stoudt
Dána-Ain Davis
Bita Amani
Sarah Haley
Subject Categories
Africana Studies | American Studies | Criminology and Criminal Justice | Family, Life Course, and Society | Gender and Sexuality | Human Geography | Inequality and Stratification | Other Anthropology | Race and Ethnicity | Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance | Social Psychology | Urban Studies | Urban Studies and Planning
Keywords
Black feminism, Black women, Abolition, Carceral State, Los Angeles, Feminist ethnography
Abstract
This project centers the multi-generational familial relationships between system-impacted Black women, mapping and uncovering the ways in which incarceration and practices of punishment impact, shape, hurt, and displace Black femme lineages. Through a qualitative lens and a specific focus on the current social and political landscape of Los Angeles, this dissertation examines the ways Black women are impacted by carceral ideology; from punitive definitions of Black womanhood, to the surveillance on Black femme familial intimacy and the rupture of Black women’s sense of home and place. Understandings of mass incarceration are frequently male-centered and most analyses of Black women’s system contact remain focused on the consequences of interpersonal violence and deficits. In place of this, this work engages with a more expansive and nuanced conception of system-involvement, explores the legacies of punishment hinged on Black femme bodies, and documents how the unique racialized gender positionalities of Black women result in a particular and often invisiblized history with mass incarceration. Pulling on Black feminist epistemologies, critical geography, and critical feminist ethnography, this is an investigation into the intersection of punishment and Black women that is both structural and deeply intimate.
Recommended Citation
Richards-Calathes, Whitney, "Inheritances of Injustice/Transference of Freedom: An Intimate Project on Black Women's Intergenerational Relationships and the Consequences of the Punishment System" (2019). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3280
Included in
Africana Studies Commons, American Studies Commons, Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons, Family, Life Course, and Society Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Human Geography Commons, Inequality and Stratification Commons, Other Anthropology Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons, Social Psychology Commons, Urban Studies Commons, Urban Studies and Planning Commons