Semester:
Offered:
Instructor: Thomas Dichter
Meeting time: Monday, 12:00-2:45 pm
This class explores the relationship between the movement to abolish incarceration and the literary production of people inside prisons. How can prison abolitionism and prison literature serve as lenses for better understanding one another? For the past 50 years, prison abolitionists have insisted on asking fundamental questions about the nature, function, and efficacy of imprisonment. We will put their challenges to the carceral state in conversation with the works of incarcerated writers over the past two centuries. Authors will include Angela Davis, Alexander Berkman, Chester Himes, Malcolm X, Clyde Bellecourt, Patrisse Cullors, and Marlon Peterson. We will also work intensively with archival materials—in particular, we will collaborate on digitizing and organizing original materials from the 1973 takeover of the Massachusetts State Prison at Walpole by the prisoners’ labor union. We will further explore the artistic and political creativity of incarcerated people by engaging with visual art, music, and the “American Prison Newspapers, 1800s-present” digital archive.