Dan Berger

Dan Berger

Associate Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies, University of Washington-Bothell Campus
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About Dan

Berger's research focuses on the carceral state, abolition, and the history of US social movements. Overarching themes in his writings include mass incarceration, prison organizing, Black Studies, and recent histories of activism. Berger is coordinator of the Washington Prison History Project and on the advisory board of the American Prison Newspapers collection.

Contributions | No Jargon Podcast | In the News | Publications

Contributions

Why Incarcerated People Hold the Keys to Prison Reform

Key Findings Brief,

In the News

"Are Florida Prisons Suppressing an Inmate Strike or Just Lying about It?," Dan Berger, The Washington Post, January 24, 2018.
"When White Supremacists Strike, Police Don't Always Strike Back," Dan Berger, The Washington Post, August 18, 2017.
"Prisons and Other Maladies of the Racist State: Reading 'Blood in My Eye' in the Era of Mass Incarceration," Dan Berger, Social Science Research Council, July 11, 2017.
"Mass Incarceration and Its Mystification: A Review of The 13th," Dan Berger, Black Perspectives, October 22, 2016.

Publications

Rethinking the American Prison Movement (with Toussaint Losier) (Routledge, 2018).

Discusses the forced labor camps of the nineteenth century to the rebellious protests of the 1960s and 1970s to the rise of mass incarceration and its discontents. Chronicles the history of American prisons and the struggles for justice still echoing in the present day.

Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era (University of North Carolina Press, 2014).

Shows how Black activists throughout the civil rights era thrust the prison into public view, turning prisoners into symbols of racial oppression while arguing that confinement was an inescapable part of Black life in the United States.