Melissa Wang

I work on the history of the prison and corrections in the 20th century United States, with a focus on management and the co-construction of new penology and security infrastructures. My MPhil dissertation and previous research centered on a labor history of prison workers. I'm interested in thinking broadly about competing ideas of "security" and the prison system as a mobile, technologized space that interacts with the free world through business, labor, and transportation. 

My current (scattered) research projects are a political history of mass incarceration in Michigan, an intellectual history of the American Correctional Association, and an STS exploration of prison technologies, goods, and services.