Political Prisoners (SC)

This short course will explore the genealogy and contested contemporary use of the category “political prisoner.” Activists, scholars, and rights organizations have advanced various definitions for the evocative term, but no consensus exists. Rarely are individuals jailed solely for their thoughts and ideas, and political conduct (particularly conduct challenging the status quo) will often contravene criminal laws of general applicability. So who counts as a “political prisoner”? Might “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski qualify? What about those imprisoned for the events of January 6, 2021? Are all prisoners, in some sense, “political”? Through careful examinations of legal cases involving those who have claimed the label (or been described as a “political prisoner” by their supporters), we’ll try to make sense of the term and the work that it accomplishes in our collective imaginations.