Criminology 3903 Hell and Damnation: Apocalypse Criminology:
We live in a time of crisis,
exacerbated and made intractable by social, economic, and political
problems, all with effects on personal liberty and social control.
These include 
economic mass migration due to famine; globalization
and the movement of capital to offshore zones; the plutocratic greed
of the one percent, the fading of the middle class and a growing
precariat; refugees of climate change brought on by fossil fuel,
toxic colonialism and environmental racism; terrorism and
counter-terrorism; political civil unrest and its suppression by an
expanding surveillance state; activism of the dispossessed, and
cyber counter-activism; the effect of living in stranger-economies;
and pandemics and the effect of disinformation. These and other
portents are part of a gathering storm of global crisis and
discontent with profound implications for both the practice and the
study of deviance and criminal justice. Image: Adbusters 2024
COURSE READINGS: Online electronic resources (OER) about
‘apocalyptic criminology,’ and cultural resources on
multidimensional issues, e.g. environment, politics, and
cyber/surveillance. This is an emerging area in criminology and as
yet, there is no monograph available as a textbook. However, there
are books, articles, and reports on the topics potential for the
weekly course modules.
COURSE MODULES:
Week 01: Theorizing the apocalypse: pandemics, protest, and
precarity
Week 02: Advances in criminological theory e.g.: ghost and gothic
criminology
Week 03: Recurring themes in popular culture I: zombie flicks and
monster stories
Week 04: Recurring themes in popular culture II: comic books and
crime
Week 05: The Anthropocene, environmental collapse, and criminalizing
protest
Week 06: The crisis in racialized policing, and the legitimacy of
the criminal justice state
Week 07: Resistance to traditional policing by minorities and
activists
Week 08: The dispossessed and the economic precariat
Week 09: Cyber-crime and artificial intelligence
Week 10: The increase in terrorism and counterterrorism
Week 11: Subcultural theory and the seduction of terrorist solutions
Week 12: Social disorganization and the rise of the totalitarian
surveillance state
Week 13: Post-apocalyptic criminology.