• jeanne's Introduction
• Hal Pepinsky's Style of Teaching: Coordinating a Professional Panel
• What Does Teaching Have to Do with Crimnological Research?
• Discussion Questions

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Introduction

Even though I had to cancel my trip to the American Society of Criminology (ASC) meetings in Washington in 2001, Hal Pepinsky was kind enough to continue to include me in the panel preparations. I've included one of his communiques here to give you a real life glimpse into a working group. Like you, we didn't get all our homework done. Notice that Mark was the only one with a paper in Hal's hands as Hal wrote this. Mea culpa. I should have had one to him also, but "life happens."

I would like you to note the consummate skill with which Hal alters his own agenda to accomodate the preparation we have managed in our respective situations. We are all in separate geographic locations, so the lack of face-to-face interaction makes our cooperative work more difficult. Just ask Susan and me! How much like our work in the classroom this is! Hal shows so much respect to the panel participants that I, the guilt-ridden creature that I am, feel no guilt, just inspiration to lend all I can to that session, even though I won't be able to be there.

Hal suggests that Susan and I should relate what teaching has to do with criminological research. I'll have an answer to him by this evening. Now that's cooperative leadership! He has inspired me to work harder. I didn't think I could just now. That's good teaching! Thank you, Hal.

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On Sunday, April 1, 2001, Hal Pepinsky wrote to panel members:

Hi once more. I had some further thoughts to offer on how presentations might be organized.

Mark, since you have the only paper I know of, in my hands at least, I'd ask you to lead off. Did you send copies to other panelists? If not, could you attach a copy by e-mail to them? You present a theoretical frame which the rest of us could relate to in our presentations of our own work. Essentially, as I see it, you propose that freedom from coercion and social support for our honest selves promotes what I'd call "peace."

Do the results of the routine activity analysis lend support to, draw into question, or somehow become totally irrelevant to Mark's theory? It seems to me to make most sense that the empirical routine activity presentation would follow Mark's.

Then you, Jeanne and Susan. I have a feeling that theories of control of crime and criminality ought to apply equally to social control in other settings. Jeanne, Susan and I share an awareness that we are police, prosecutors, judges and wardens to our students. I'm thinking that you, Jeanne and Susan, can relate what teaching has to do with criminological research.

I'll finish up. I'll try not to take more than 5 minutes, 10 at the most. To improve the odds that we all will get something meaningful out of our session together, I ask you to make a conscious effort to keep track of your time and to be as brief in your introductory statement as you can. I'd like us to sit out front roughly in a circle, however small that might be. May I ask you please to make it clear that this is not a full presentation of your work, to refer people to papers, web sites, whatever, and then quickly move on to trying to relate some aspect of your work to what others of us appear to be doing? In a conversation, brevity of any single set of remarks is a virtue, and long monologues are structural violence, or so radical feminists like Birgit Brock-Utne tell meJ.

I think it would be wonderful if each of us in opening remarks kept to five minutes, no harm done if any of us goes ten minutes, still acceptable at the outside if any of us ends within fifteen minutes. I heard Jeanne talk at JSA, full of energy and information, introduce what she and Susan do in three times this limit. I don't want to cut anyone off or cut anyone's strut, but I do want to ask each of us to pay as much attention to other speakers as to the drive to make one's own scholarly pitch. Sessions can be fun for all concerned! Again, I look forward to seeing you soon-l&p hal

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Later Sunday, April 1, 2001, jeanne wrote:

Hal, as I thought about your question, what does teaching have to do with criminological research, I realized the extent to which I have been influenced by postmodern and critical approaches to theory.

I have been terribly harmed by the exclusivity of the normative hierarchy in our society. As an eight-year-old I watched as my father stole my Christmas present from a dime store. I watched in terror as the security guard scanned the crowded store. I breathed a sigh of relief that my father was not caught. And then I tried to express joy at the present under the tree.

What does teaching have to do with criminological research? Well, at that young age, I understood agency and structural context. Constitutive Criminology. I understood that I loved my father, and that he loved me. But I also understood that the society in which we lived excluded us from "the goodies available to all if they just worked hard." Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure. And I knew then that teaching was the answer. Revolutions cannot happen from above. They simply breed different oppressors. We must learn to rebuild the community we lost with the adversarialism of capitalism, particularly late capitalism. And so I set about teaching, and never ever changed my mind about its importance.

Then I had a wonderful college student, Susan Takata, who shared my dreams, and carried them on to the next generation. Together we have learned to create a learning climate in which students can bring awareness to the extent to which crime is bounded by our dominant discourse. We have found how much that can do to change the violence in which crime is bred.

More soon . . .

love and peace, jeanne

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Discussion Questions

1. How do you think our classroom experiences affect our understanding of crime and violence?
   jeanne's notes on one plausible response:

   I can only describe the ways I think our classroom experiences affect my understanding of crime and violence. As we bring such issues as Tim Wise's white denial over school shootings and the oppression of not having our voices heard over graduation issues, I become more and more aware of the limitations of our agency, and I realize how much we are constrained by the dominant discourse. (Link Kylene's e-mail on this here.) And I follow Martha Minow's and Jonathan Lear's lead in recognizing all the unstated assumptions on which our theories of crime are based, and the importance of not always depending on "knowingness.

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