CRM 187 A-Z - (IS) Special Topics in Criminology

Semester Hours: 3

Current Special Topics

CRM 187L - Black Letter Criminal Law and Socio-Legal Analysis

This course offers a rigorous socio-legal examination of U.S. criminal law, grounding students in foundational doctrine while interrogating the gap between law as written and law as practiced. Through close reading of statutes and judicial opinions, students develop doctrinal fluency in the core principles of criminal liability and defense, applying those principles to complex fact patterns drawn from real cases. The course then turns to the institutional composition of criminal law enforcement—policing, prosecution, adjudication, and punishment—analyzing how organizational constraints and incentive structures shape the meaning and reach of criminal law in practice. Throughout, students engage enduring questions of justice, legitimacy, and public policy, with sustained attention to how power, race, gender, and class condition outcomes across the criminal legal system.

CRM 187G - International Human Rights Law

The course is designed to provide students with an overview of international human rights law. The course will focus on the core international human rights instruments and mechanisms that support the promotion and protection of human rights worldwide. Current States’ reports under examination by key United Nations human rights treaty bodies as well as country-specific situations under consideration of the UN Human Rights System, will be showcased during the course to contextualize the subject matter and how international human rights standards can further social justice efforts.

CRM 187Z - Violence and Society

Even though the study of violence is an important part of sociology, its study has been pushed to the margins of our discipline. We rarely take the time to reflect on this prevalent social fact. And when we do it, it is to morally judge the agents of violence. But what is violence? Is it only a physical phenomenon? Do we only experience violence individually, or is it also a collective experience? What are the sources of organized violence? Do social structures and institutions produce violence? Do power and domination relate to violence? Is the use of violence a rational enterprise? Violence and Society explores these and other important social inquiries. To do so, it takes a marked structural approach to the examination of violence. The readings selected focus - not exclusively but mainly- on how the State produces violence and how non-state organizations implement violence to match, respond to, and/or contest what they perceive as State, economic, and/or cultural violence.

Same as SOC 187Z  

Prerequisite(s)/Course Notes:
May be repeated for credit when topics vary. As individual subjects are offered, each is assigned a letter (A-Z) which is affixed to the course number. Students may take up to two (6 s.h.) of these courses in fulfillment of the electives requirement for their Criminology major or minor, so long as each special topics course has a different letter designation. Specific titles and course descriptions for special topics courses are available in the online class schedule.

View Course Offering(s):

Summer Session I 2026

Summer Session II 2026

Summer Session III 2026

Fall 2026