Abstract
The reflections in this article are grounded in my experience teaching a graduate-level special topics course on media and abolition at the University of Alberta in 2023. In this article, I draw upon my experience teaching this course in order to offer a general framework for integrating abolitionist principles into the media studies classroom. In addition to tracing a critical genealogy of scholarly and activist efforts to delineate and intervene in the relations among prisons, policing and media, I propose two key abolitionist principles that challenge how we teach media studies: (1) an intentional centering of incarcerated/criminalized people and a critical interrogation of the prison as a social relationship that shapes everyday life and knowledge production; and (2) a commitment to demanding the impossible and to imagining transformative rather than merely reformist solutions to problems.
Recommended Citation
Capper, Beth
(2025)
"Towards Abolitionist Media Studies,"
Feminist Pedagogy: Vol. 6:
Iss.
4, Article 16.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/feministpedagogy/vol6/iss4/16