Heather Pool

Why did it take only 23 days for the state of South Carolina to to remove the Confederate Battle Flag (CBF) from the grounds of the state house after Dylann Roof, white, murdered nine black parishioners at a prayer meeting in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015?1 The flag had been flying at the state capitol since 1962, raised as a commemoration of the centennial of the Civil War, but then never lowered; the resignification of the CBF that had occurred mid-20 th century had turned the flag from revered, almost sacred memorial/historical object to a symbol of contemporary resistance to the Black Freedom Movement. So why and how did the Charleston Massacre overcome 53 years of resistance to the removal of the CBF in a mere 23 days? To begin formulating an answer to these questions, the first section provides an overview of the events in Charleston and the political context surrounding the events, while the second section traces the evolution of the meanings of the CBF from 1865 to date. The third section then offers a variety of ways we might interpret the events leading to the removal of the flag. I argue that the response to these questions lies where sovereignty, symbolism, and white domination intersect. First, the sovereignty of the state required reassertion in the wake of Roof's massive unleashing of violence on black persons, persons against whom the state frequently and disproportionately uses violence. Roof's arrest and prosecution, then, might be read as an effort to reassert sovereignty by reminding the state's (white) citizens that it alone has the monopoly on violence against black persons. Second, one of the significant symbols of the state's sovereignty

A comparative reading of two recent crime dramas, The Fall and The Bletchley Circle, demonstrates the limits of law and potential of care to address violence against women. The Fall, a Nordic noir, moves beyond a gender-blind account of crime yet relies on a liberal, state-centric response that blunts its political critique. The Bletchley Circle, a hybrid cozy-period-detective genre piece set in post-World War II London, offers a new perspective on violence against women in crime dramas. First, juxtaposing men's and women's postwar experiences, The Bletchley Circle frames violence against women as an ongoing war in which women remain comrades-in-arms. Second, it suggests that while the state has a necessary role to play as a coordinator of spaces, skills, and citizens, state action alone cannot end violence against women. Rather, citizen engagement through an ethic of care may offer a new way to address such harms.

A politics of mourning invokes the deaths of everyday citizens to call for political change. For this to occur, a loss must be visible and provoke discussions about responsibility. Mourning gauges political standing and belonging; it is also a moment when these categories can be transformed. This article analyzes the Triangle Fire of 1911 as a site of political mourning, which ultimately  provoked a mixed response to the political status quo. Mourning improved labor’s position in relation to industry by opening formerly private spaces of employment to government regulation, but it did so by expanding the domain of whiteness rather than contesting the racialized construction of the polity. In doing so, the mourning contributed to the construction of a white body politic.

After Emmett Till’s murder in 1955, African-Americans mobilized political mourning to oppose the status quo of white power. Till’s death and media coverage that followed generated an affective connection by white Northern liberals to the plight of African-Americans in the South; as a result, Till’s death and the mourning that followed contributed to subtle but important changes that enabled the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement to appeal to the white majority. This effort succeeded in generating white sympathy because it exposed the distance between formal law and law on the ground and expanded the audience to the conflict.

When are memory, trauma, and mourning political? That is, what are the political effects of these things? Much of political theory begins with assumptions of rationality and individuality; my goal for this course is to think through whether these assumptions are sound, and how these assumptions are related to the reality of affective memories, traumatic events, and mournable losses. The question is how and when individual memories, traumas, and mourning become political? What makes a traumatic event a political concern? How is political memory shaped and reshaped? How and when do individual memories, traumas, or losses become politically significant? The obvious case of the political nature of memory, trauma, and mourning, of course, is war. Thus, after a brief overview of some important precursor texts, we will consider memory, trauma, and mourning through the lens of war. We will consider what kind of memory, trauma, and mourning follows war. But war is never just war: it creates a narrative about our past, built up to perform a variety of political tasks; it often serves as the basis of a narrative about national identity; and it is often memorialized in concrete, public sites, which serve as loci for recognition of the affective experience of those affected by war. To consider these various purposes of memory and legacies of trauma, we will read part of Jay Winters' Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning; Marita Sturkens' Tangled Legacies; and Jenny Ed-kins' Trauma and the Memory of Politics. We will then move on to consider the trauma and memory of genocide, drawing on Jeffrey Alexander's Trauma: A Social Theory and returning to Edkins' Trauma and the Memory of Politics. Given the grimness of the texts thus far assigned, we will end on a slightly more positive note by thinking through how traumatic memories and the mourning after traumatic events might be addressed through the law. To that end, we will read Martha Minow's Breaking the Cycles of Hatred.

Most people agree that the rule of law is an essential foundation of any well-governed society.  Law should protect life, liberty, and property; it should be fair; people should be treated equally. When law does not accomplish these goals, we may condemn the society as one being governed arbitrarily rather than justly.  But while most that some basic rule of law is imperative, what do we mean by law? Is it the words on the page of our Constitution?  Is it the force used by police officers? What about the arguments used by members of the bar or court that, over time, gain precedential value and become like the law on the books?  Is law political or above politics?  What is this thing that we all think is essential?  Is it static or dynamic?  What does it enable, and perhaps more importantly, what does it prevent?  Whose lives, liberties, and properties does law protect?  Drawing on some canonical sociolegal research, the first section of this course will weigh different ways of theorizing what law is. 

In a similar vein of inquiry, most contemporary citizens will agree that race plays an important role in contemporary political life. And yet there is great disagreement about what race is and what political actions might be necessary to ensure equality for all.  What do we mean by race? Is race referring to skin color, biology, or ancestry? Or is race about how power is distributed in our society economically, politically, culturally, and socially?  Why do race-thinking, racial segregation, and racial disparities persist, even though slavery in the US was abolished 150 years ago?  As with the first part of the course, the second part of the course will consider the theoretical foundations of race. 

While these two theoretical inquiries could easily fill an entire course on their own, our focus will be on the interaction between them.  How have ideas of race shaped what we think the law is and how has the law shaped what we think race is?  In line with the work of Critical Race Theorists, the fundamental argument of the course is that these two domains are integrally related: in the parlance of theory-speak, they are interdependent or co-constitutive such that to think of one requires recognizing the influence of the other.  Thus, studying race without considering law’s role in shaping what race is is deficient, and studying the law without considering how race has shaped what law is is similarly unsatisfactory. Thus, to more fully grasp what law and race are, we should consider how they work together to shape the world we inhabit. This course focuses primarily on how race and law are inter-related, but many scholars have made similar claims about law and gender, class, disability, and sexuality. While we may discuss or recognize some of these additional relationships, the focus in this class is on race and law. 

The bulk of the course will consider the interaction between race and law in four major policy areas: labor, immigration, and criminal justice.  Because my own research interests and training are primarily rooted in the American context, our inquiries will be limited to the context of the United States.  (That said, a similar course could be developed for practically any country or region in the world.) 

The course will focus primarily on events in the 20th and 21st Centuries, so some familiarity with the general outlines of American political history – particularly regarding race and law – will be essential, as many of the texts we read will assume a fair bit of prior knowledge.

What leads us to respond politically to the deaths of some citizens and not others? This is one of the critical questions Heather Pool asks in Political Mourning. Born out of her personal experiences with the trauma of 9/11, Pool’s astute book looks at how death becomes political, and how it can mobilize everyday citizens to argue for political change.

Pool examines four tragedies in American history—the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, the lynching of Emmett Till, the September 11 attacks, and the Black Lives Matter movement—that offered opportunities to tilt toward justice and democratic inclusion. Some of these opportunities were taken, some were not. However, these watershed moments show, historically, how political identity and political responsibility intersect and how racial identity shapes who is mourned. Political Mourning helps explain why Americans recognize the names of Trayvon Martin and Sandra Bland; activists took those cases public while many similar victims have been ignored by the news media.

Concluding with an afterword on the coronavirus, Pool emphasizes the importance of collective responsibility for justice and why we ought to respond to tragedy in ways that are more politically inclusive.

After Emmett Till’s murder in 1955, African-Americans mobilized political mourning to oppose the status quo of white power. Till’s death and media coverage that followed generated an affective connection by white Northern liberals to the plight of African-Americans in the South; as a result, Till’s death and the mourning that followed contributed to subtle but important changes that enabled the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement to appeal to the white majority. This effort succeeded in generating white sympathy because it exposed the distance between formal law and law on the ground and expanded the audience to the conflict.

ABSTRACTAlthough most instructors care deeply about student writing, they often give little attention to the part of the writing process over which they maintain complete control: the assignment itself. Yet, the written prompt that we distribute is often where student confusion (and confused writing) begins. Using Bloom’s taxonomy as inspiration, we offer instructors a typology directly linked to course objectives, which we believe can be readily understood by student writers.