SC State to celebrate history professor’s book: “Prison Architecture and Punishment in Colonial Senegal”

On October 12, Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman and Littlefield, published Konaté’s book. Lexington Books publishes stand-alone titles and titles in a broad range of series that span the social sciences and humanities. 

According to its website, “Lexington Books takes great pride in its unwavering commitment to publishing specialized research essential to advanced scholarship. We continue to publish high-quality peer-reviewed monographs and edited collections by established and emerging scholars.”

In “Prison Architecture and Punishment in Colonial Senegal,” a book funded by National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, Konaté provides a rigorously researched and illuminating study of prison architecture in colonial and post-colonial Senegal, highlighting the architecture of repression and cultures of violence inherent in colonial prison systems. The analysis of the spatial locations of prisons and architectures of prisons delivers new insights into the punitive functioning of imprisonment, and the weaknesses of colonial ‘disciplinary’ regimes in Senegal. Konaté focuses on recovering prisoners’ voices and nuances helpful in understanding the various aspects of incarceration.