As currently measured by the United Nations' Human Development Index, the United States has one of the highest standards of living in the world. Average life expectancies, educational levels, and annual incomes place even poor Americans among the most privileged people on earth. Even so, there are gross inequalities inside the U.S. Factors of personal identity, including race, class, and gender, predict with uncanny precision the range of life choices available to any given individual. The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Cities are rife with violence, the political system is polarized and corrupt, and personal lives of rich and poor are marked by addiction, excess, apathy, and want. 

This program questions how this has happened: How do the personal identities and everyday lives of a people come together to shape social, economic, and political conditions in a nation like the United States? How do such conditions, in turn, shape individual identities and lives? What institutions have framed and enforced these conditions over time? What institutions currently sustain them? How do diverse Americans understand and react to these conditions? What can we do to make things better now?  To find answers, we will focus on two institutions fundamental to personal identity and social control in the American present and past – law and commerce. We will examine how property law and the criminal justice system in particular have shaped American history, how history has shaped them, and how both have managed personal identities through social control.

In fall quarter, we will study the diverse array of social, economic, and political relationships that developed in the U.S. from settlement to the end of slavery. In winter, we will examine changes in relationships from the closing of the western frontier through the present. In spring, we will place our own lives in proximate context with exploration of contemporary theories of personal identity and social control. In all quarters, we will make a visual study of "the outlaw" as a trope both romanticized and reviled in American folklore and popular culture. We will also place U.S. economic development into a general global context. Interdisciplinary readings will include legal studies, legal history, social and economic history, critical race studies, visual studies, and feminist theory. Classes will include discussion seminars, writing workshops, lectures, student panel presentations, library study periods, and occasional film screenings.

Program assignments will help us grow in the art and craft of clear communication and well-supported argumentation. They will include critical reading, academic writing, research in peer-reviewed literature, and public outreach and speaking. A digital photography component will explore "the outlaw" through visual expression. In spring, internship opportunities and individualized learning plans will bring program themes to social outreach agencies and groups in our local community.

This program will offer appropriate support to all students ready to do advanced work. Activities will support student peer-to-peer teaching, personal responsibility for learning and achievement, contemplative study habits, and intensive skills development. Transfer students are welcome.