ABSTRACT
Higher Education and the Carceral State: Transforming Together explores the diversity of ways in which university faculty and students are intervening in the system of mass incarceration through the development of transformative arts and educational programs for students in correctional institutions.
Demonstrating the ways that higher education can intervene in and disrupt the deeply traumatic experience of incarceration and shift the embedded social-emotional cycles that lead to recidivism, this book is both inspiration and guide for those seeking to create and sustain programs as well as to educate students about the types of programs universities bring to prisons.
From arts workshops and educational courses to degree-granting programs, individuals and communities across multiple disciplines in higher education are actively breaking the cycle of shame and division in mass incarceration through direct engagement. This book explores the inspiring, innovative, and changemaking initiatives in carceral spaces - from arts workshops and educational courses to degree granting programs - through the lens of faculty, artists, scholars, students, and administrators. Readers will learn the diverse ways in which these interventions and partnerships can take shape and the life changing impacts that they have on all those involved, in particular students who are incarcerated. The book includes authors with lived experience of incarceration throughout.
Section I highlights the voices of students who are currently or formerly incarcerated, while Section II addresses diverse collaborations through and across systems of corrections and education. Section III features the voices of teaching artists, while Section IV includes those that start and lead these programs, offering roadmaps for others interested in engaging in this transformative work.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part Section I|56 pages
Voices of Students
chapter 2|9 pages
Transformation and Redemption
part Section II|58 pages
Collaborating in and through the System
chapter 7|9 pages
“Disappearing Acts” and Education as the Practice of Freedom
chapter 11|11 pages
Transcommunal Peace, Cooperation, and Respect for Diversity
part Section III|52 pages
Voices of Teaching Artists and Scholars
chapter 15|11 pages
Pushing Back/Pushing Forward
chapter 16|12 pages
Excursion and Return
part Section IV|60 pages
Changemaking and Coalition Building