Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

Jeff Adler, Professor of History shares this essay draft on the history of American police brutality, written for an edited volume. He is interested in exploring how he might further develop the essay as a book.

From the University of Iowa’s Department of History:

Simon Balto is a scholar of policing and the carceral in African American history. Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power (U of North Carolina Press, 2019) explores how Chicago’s police system in Black neighborhoods became brutal, repressive, and negligent during the 20^th century. His book won the Benjamin Hooks Institute’s National Book Award. Balto’s writing has appeared in publications across a very wide spectrum: TIME, The Washington Post, The Progressive, the Journal of African American History, and Labor. Balto is at work on a history of white criminals donning blackface when commissioning crimes. Also forthcoming is a history of Fred Hampton, the Black Panther assassinated in 1969 at age 21 by the Chicago Police Department. See: https://www.simonbalto.com/vita

From University of Florida’s Department of Political Science:

Juliana Sanin studies gender-based violence in Latin America. Her book-in-progress explores the increase in violence directed at women politicians. She asks how such violence has had an impact on the presence of women politicians in Latin America, the first continent to criminalize such gender-based violence. Attending to local activism, international norms, and innovative solutions to women’s political representation, Sanin shows that violence is increasingly recognized as a barrier to political participation, and at a time of rising incidents of assault, intimidation, and abuse. She points to the conceptual ambiguities and contours, demonstrating how bias is entangled with structural, cultural, and symbolic violence. Other themes are manifestations of backlash, underreporting, and institutional efforts to disincentivize violence. Her recent publications include articles in Politics & Gender (2020); Signs (2020); and Perspectives on Politics  (2019). 

 Jeffrey S. Adler’s most recent book is Murder and the Policing of Race: New Orleans, 1920-1945 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019). His scholarship has long focused on the history of cities, violence, crime, race relations, and criminal justice in the United States.  Professor Adler received his Ph.D. from Harvard University; has received research grants from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, NEH, and ACLS; and publishes in history journals as well as in criminology and sociology journals and law reviews. The theme has been with him for some time. In 2006, he published a monograph exploring violence and policing in another American city: First in Violence, Deepest in Dirt: Homicide in Chicago, 1875-1920 (Harvard U Press).

This event is open to all. To participate and receive the required Zoom link and precirculated reading, contact Professor Nancy Hunt (nrhunt@ufl.edu).