The big house : image and reality of the American prison / Stephen Cox.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Icons of AmericaPublication details: New Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press, Description: x, 222 pages, 22 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, photographs ; 22 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780300124194
  • 0300124198
  • 9780300215083
  • 0300215088
Subject(s): Genre/Form: DDC classification:
  • 365/.973 22
LOC classification:
  • HV9469 .C694 2009
Online resources:
Contents:
Touring the institution -- How to build a big house -- Your life as a convict -- The art of humiliation -- Sex -- You built it, now try to run it -- A tale of two prisons -- Rajahs and reformers -- Prisons you can't tear down.
Summary: In this book is the complex and fascinating history of what it is like "doing time" in the "Big House" and its influence on the American imagination. The Big House is America's idea of the prison, a huge, tough, ostentatiously oppressive pile of rock, bristling with rules and punishments, overwhelming in size and the intent to intimidate. The author tells the story of the American prison, its politics, its sex, its violence, its inability to control itself, and its idealization in American popular culture. The book investigates both the popular images of prison and the realities behind them: problems of control and discipline, mainenance and reform, power and sexuality. It conveys an awareness of the limits of human and institutional power, and of the symbolic and iconic qualities the "Big House" has attained in America's understanding of itself. -- From book jacket.
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Item type Current library Call number Copy number Status Date due Barcode
Books Books Odessa College Stacks 365.973 C878B (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Available 51994001616335

Includes bibliographical references (pages 203-211) and index.

Touring the institution -- How to build a big house -- Your life as a convict -- The art of humiliation -- Sex -- You built it, now try to run it -- A tale of two prisons -- Rajahs and reformers -- Prisons you can't tear down.

In this book is the complex and fascinating history of what it is like "doing time" in the "Big House" and its influence on the American imagination. The Big House is America's idea of the prison, a huge, tough, ostentatiously oppressive pile of rock, bristling with rules and punishments, overwhelming in size and the intent to intimidate. The author tells the story of the American prison, its politics, its sex, its violence, its inability to control itself, and its idealization in American popular culture. The book investigates both the popular images of prison and the realities behind them: problems of control and discipline, mainenance and reform, power and sexuality. It conveys an awareness of the limits of human and institutional power, and of the symbolic and iconic qualities the "Big House" has attained in America's understanding of itself. -- From book jacket.

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