Racialized Policing: New Paradigms, Alternative Futures

Binghamton University

April XX­­ and XX, 2024

Where did police forces as we know them come from? What does policing police in the first place? How might the bodies targeted by policing escape, or elude, its nebulous powers? Can policing escape its oppressive pasts—and racialized origins? The answers to these questions all depend on when and where we are looking from. They depend on tangled histories, figures, images, words.

This conference will explore new paradigms for the study of racialized policing, how they are challenged, and possibilities to supersede them. The conference will emphasize the importance of locating the history of policing within a global frame, moving away from the nation state to address the legacies of colonialism and empire and processes of dispossession and capital formation.

We encourage papers and presentations on any of those topics. We are especially eager to foster conversations that bring historical and archival scholarship together with present-day activism and debates over abolition and reform. We also encourage submissions from artists, writers, and creative practitioners.

Send proposals of 250 words and a CV or brief bio to jhavard@binghamton.edu by January 15, 2024. The conference will be in-person, with some hybrid panels.

This conference is supported by a seed grant from the Binghamton University Transdisciplinary Area of Excellence in Citizenship, Rights, and Cultural Belonging.

Image: Ben Johnson, And Justice for All, oil on canvas, detail.
Binghamton University Art Museum (1972.32, gift of Sam Golden)