Punishment in Popular Culture

"[T]his collection will reward students who seek insight into the conceptions of justice that animate the ghost in the popular culture machine." (Choice) "[T]here is much to appreciate in this work.Punishment in Popular Cultureis the most recent of the five books Ogletree and Sarat have edited in their series on race and justice. That subject remains possibly the most important area of inquiry in the fields of criminal justice and legal studies. One hopes they will continue to encourage the scholarship that contributes to our understanding of race and justice." (Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books) "This is a necessary and important addition to the literature of legal studies. Tackling one of the most salient issues of our day, the authors use the most sophisticated interdisciplinary methodologies to tease out the many subtle strands underlying the debates around capital punishment." - Elayne Rapping,University at Buffalo, The State University of New York "A fluid merging of cultural theory, media studies, and the social facts of mass incarceration, Punishment in Popular Culture is an unprecedented assembly of exceptional and emergent interdisciplinary scholars who take on the cultural life of punishment against the backdrop of the U.S. carceral regime. Disturbing, original, and provocative, this volume reveals how deeply and broadly punishment is enmeshed in the imaginary of everyday life in American society. From the contemporary perspective and across time, we see how punitive images, often overlooked, carry profound cultural force in our socio-political landscape." - Michelle Brown,University of Tennessee "Eloquently portray[s] the ways in which popular culture and the criminal justice system influence and feed off each other in a way that both impacts and shapes popular opinion but also various laws." (Metapsychology) "The essays in this VERY creative and thought-provoking book force us to think about what movie depictions of punishment represent, how we receive them, and how our consciousness is shaped by them. Highly recommended!" - James B. Jacobs,Warren E. Burger Professor of Law, New York University