Akhila L. Ananth is an Associate Professor in the School of Criminal Justice & Criminalistics at California State University, Los Angeles. Her research examines constructions of race, and gender in the design of juvenile courts and detention facilities and has been published in edited collections and peer-reviewed journals, including The Sociological Review Magazine; Kalfou; Social Justice; Gender, Place, and Culture; and Studies in Law, Politics, and Society. In addition to this research, she is on the executive board of her faculty union chapter, serves as a Director for the LA-32 Neighborhood Council, co-founded an internationalist anti-fascism collective, and supports various racial and economic justice projects in Los Angeles.
At Cal State LA, my students come to the classroom ready to ask the hard questions: How do we create a more just world, acknowledging the past mistakes we’ve made as societies? What will our communities look like when we’ve eliminated the causes and correlates of crime and all people feel supported to live productive, healthy lives? We draw from our experiences living and working in Los Angeles to think creatively about racial justice and social change. Every day I come to work, I learn from my students as much as they learn from me.
Selected Publications Available Online:
- Ananth, A.L. (2014). The Gracious Spaces of Children’s Law: Innocence and Culpability in the Construction of a Children’s Court. Studies in Law, Politics, and Society (63).
- Ananth, A. L. (2019). Sustainable Spaces, Sustained Mass Incarceration: Environmental Protection as Racial Violence in the Design of Juvenile Incarceration. Kalfou, 6(2), 155-176. DOI: https://search.proquest.com/docview/2426494115/fulltext/5C9C42269FA54518PQ/1?accountid=10352
- Ananth, A. L., & Leiva, P. (2019). Policing the People's University: The Precarity of Sanctuary in the California State University System. Social Justice, 46(4), 107-119. DOI: http://www.socialjusticejournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/158_06_COMM_Ananth.pdf
- Ananth, A. L. (2017). The home the law built: white domesticity and the designs of juvenile dependency law in Los Angeles, California. Gender, Place & Culture, 24(2), 189-200. DOI: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0966369X.2016.1277188
- Ananth, A. L., Willard, M., & Herz, D. C. (2019). A Service-Learning Partnership Between Cal State LA and the Los Angeles County Probation Department: Making the Case for Civic Professionalism. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 23(2), 117-130. DOI: https://ojs01.galib.uga.edu/jheoe/article/view/1455
Education
Ph.D. – Criminology, Law and Society (Graduate Feminist Emphasis), University of California, Irvine
MA – Social Ecology, University of California, Irvine
BA – Individualized Study, New York University
Research Interests:
Race, Gender, Child Welfare in Los Angeles, Juvenile Justice in Global Contexts
Courses Taught:
Multiculturalism in the Criminal Justice System
Juvenile Justice, Probation Service Learning