I am currently 4,134 words deep into NaNoWriMo 2014 – that’s “National Novel-Writing Month,” for the uninitiated. I say that firmly tongue-in-cheek, because I’m barely initiated myself. I’ve known about NaNoWriMo for years (I seem to be embedded in a social network of creative writers – and I like it that way!) but have never…
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Using Google Forms for Midsemester Evaluations
I use mid-semester evaluations to get student feedback not only on my teaching, but on their preparedness and engagement in the course. I find that students often have constructive advice about improvements I could easily make (“more discussion,” “more group activities”) and can be quite introspective about their own performance in the class (“I should…
#FergusonSyllabus: Resources for Discussing Ferguson in the Classroom
I have written here already about some of my ideas for teaching about Ferguson and the death of Mike Brown, specifically about police militarization, the long history of troubled relations between police and communities of color, racial profiling and discrimination, and media depictions of victims and offenders. If you are interested in further resources, you should…
Ferguson and the Militarization of Police
Last night I stayed up late, refreshing my Twitter feed and watching commentary about the situation in Ferguson, Mo. Thank goodness for Twitter, for the folks on the ground live-tweeting what they see and for the social commentary of many brilliant minds. I checked my other social media accounts and looked at the differences in…
#IfTheyGunnedMeDown
A young man named Michael Brown has been killed by police officers in St. Louis, Missouri. According to eyewitness accounts, Michael was walking (unarmed) to visit his grandmother when witnesses saw an officer approach Brown and have some sort of confrontation with him. One witness states that she saw the police officer attempt to put…
Racism, fear of crime, and punitive public policy.
This Slate article is all over my Facebook news feed this week. It’s an article reporting on the results of a study by Stanford University psychologists Rebecca Hetey and Jennifer Eberhardt. According to Slate, the researchers conducted two different experiments, one in San Francisco and one in New York City. You can read the details of…
American Society of Criminology Annual Meeting 2014: Preliminary Program Available
The preliminary program for the 2014 meeting of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) is now available on the organization’s website. The ASC annual conference is one of the highlights of the academic year. Even though it was always a significant financial burden to attend as a student (even with partial funding through my department),…
John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight”: Wealth Gap
It is impossible — or it should be impossible, at least — to talk about crime and justice without discussing economic inequality. It is a key concept in numerous criminological theories, appearing under the guise of poverty, blocked opportunities, relative deprivation, concentrated disadvantage, and many other closely-related concepts. Income and wealth translate into social and political power,…