Because traditional criminology ‘leaves out many voices’
A sociology professor at Southern Connecticut State University has a new book out, one which asks “what if we taught criminology in a way that included everyone?”
Venezia Michalsen claims “traditional” criminology studies “focus on the same ideas and leave out many voices,” the CUNY Graduate Center (of which Michalsen is an alumna) reports.
These include just about everyone who isn’t a straight white male: “women, people of color, disabled people, and queer communities.”
Michalsen (pictured) says “almost all” the first-level criminology texts she’s looked through “corraled” the “critical perspective” of the field into just one chapter, barely mentioning “feminist, anti-racist, queer, and anti-ableist perspectives on people who break the law.”
But her book “Intersectional Feminist Criminology: A Critical Companion to Theory and Research” will “prepare students and teachers to ask tough questions” as each chapter “critiques” the traditional perspectives, and then allows for a “reflection.”
Michalsen says the book presents “a vision of justice that moves beyond punishment and toward real justice.”
According to its description, the text also “analyz[es] gendered patterns of perpetration and victimization,” and “mirrors standard course content through an intersectional feminist lens.”
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This isn’t Michalsen’s first time tackling these ideas. She’s spent years researching women’s experiences with incarceration and reentry. Before becoming a professor, she worked at the Women’s Prison Association in New York City, helping women navigate life after prison, and she spent 15 years as a professor of justice studies at Montclair State University, where she published her first book, Mothering and Desistance in Re-Entry. …
Her path started at the CUNY Graduate Center, where she earned her doctorate and a certificate in Women’s Studies. That experience, she says, gave her the tools to combine academic research with a deep commitment to equity and justice. This new book is the result of that journey.
“The CUNY Graduate Center was a site of great learning and transformation for me,” Michalsen said.
Michalsen is the coordinator of the SCSU M.S. Sociology Program which “specifically emphasizes social justice, identifying its barriers and constraints, and seeking ways to mitigate them.”
She previously served as a professor of “justice studies” at Montclair State University.
Other written works by Michalsen include “Child welfare is prison for Black and brown mothers: Abolitionist feminism in the face of multiple racist surveillance systems,” “A cell of one’s own? Incarceration and other turning points in women’s desistance,” and “Mothering as a life course transition: Do women go straight for their children?”
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IMAGE CAPTION & CREDIT: Venezia Michalsen; CUNY Graduate Center
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