Fall 2015/Spring 2016 LSC Emphasis

In the 2015–2016 year, the following courses made up the emphasis:

  1. Fall 2015: Law & Violence (Sora Han)
  2. Winter 2016: Multi and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Law (Shauhin Talesh)
  3. Spring 2016: Comparative State Formation (Kamal Sadiq)

The first cohort included 8 students, representing schools from across UCI:

Dallas Augustine
Advisor: Song Richardson
Dallas' research interests revolve primarily around the disjunctures between carceral policy and the lived prison experience. In particular, she is interested in the jurisprudence and within-prison policies regarding extreme punishment and prisoner mental health, as well as barriers to re-entry for those exiting prison and seeking employment, housing, and treatment post-release.

Amy Magnus
Advisor: Emily Thuma
Amy Magnus PhD candidate in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society. Amy's primary interests encompass race and gender in American society, juvenile justice, access to justice, and the multiple facets of inequality in the American criminal justice system.

Kristin Maziarka
Advisor: Valerie Olson
Kristen's current research interest is in prison environments. Specifically, she is interested in built prison environments, deprivation, and mass incarceration. She hopes to further her research by examining built environment as micro-aggression in prison, and also comparatively study prisons and impoverished neighborhoods.

Linette Park
Advisor: Keramet Reiter
Linette Park is a PhD candidate in the Culture and Theory Program. Her research explores the Los Angeles Uprisings of 1992, the prison industrial complex, and the underground artistic and political practices in South Los Angeles during this time period. Her current work focuses on the Pelican Bay Hunger Strikes and examines modalities of political subjectivity and violence. Her research draws from critical theory, political thought, phenomenology and poetics, aesthetic theory, Black feminist theory, and Afro-pessimism.

James Pratt
Advisor: Andrew Highsmith
James Pratt Jr.'s research focuses on the relationship between culture, violence, and the law. He is specifically interested in understanding dispute resolution and regional, historical, and cultural influences.

Kasey Ragan
Advisor: Chris Whytock
Kasey's research interests are: privatization, border militarization and commodification of bodies, immigrant detention centers, and state sanctioned/structural violence against women.

Ariela Rutkin-Becker
Advisor: Geoff Ward
Ariela is interested in racial and economic rights, and the potential of our criminal and civil justice systems to both further and impede the fulfillment of those rights. Ariela plans to research cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural conceptualizations of radical welfare reform, and the role of young lawyers in bringing about large-scale social and political change.