Welcome to the course!  This entirely on-line class explores the history of post-war New York through the paired lenses of law breaking and law enforcement. We will follow crime’s trajectory in the city from its startling explosion in the 1960s, through its equally unanticipated plunge in the 1990s, and then end  the course with an study of the highly-contested nature of policing recently.

Structure of Course

(learning outcomes for the course can be found here)

Class “meets” every Thursday in the sense that (starting on 2/07) there will often be a timed, on-line test on the week’s material–generally a reading and/or a film.  While you can start these tests anytime from Thursday at 6 AM until Friday at 6 AM, you will have only a limited amount of time to take the test once you start.  Tests will never be less than 30 minutes long and never more than an hour and a half.

Some weeks, however, there will be a written homework in the form of short-answer questions or a two-to-three page essay.

Beware the “drop down” feature of syllabus button: be sure to read and link through assignments on the syllabus page rather than using the “drop down” feature of the syllabus button at the top of the page. The syllabus page provides essential information that you won’t otherwise get.

Field Trips
For those of you who live in New York City, I will also be offering an extra-credit walking tour of organized crime in Little Italy and Chinatown.  If I can get funding from Student

JJ students Kayaking 2018

Activities, I will (as I have done for the past six years) lead a kayaking tour on the Hudson of waterfront corruption.

Websites and Materials

We will use two websites for this course: (1) this one and (2) Blackboard.  The Bb site will largely be for submitting homework, taking exams, and finding readings. The syllabus, assignment instructions, contact information, and other such things will all be here on this site (see buttons above).

Communication with Prof. Umbach

To avoid spam, I communicate only with JJ e-mail addresses.  See above for all contact info.

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