Writing Beyond the Prison: Reimagining the Carceral Ecosystem with Incarcerated Authors

Description: This public humanities project, created through a university-community partnership, is designed to support, publish, archive, and make widely available the writings of those most directly impacted by the carceral system.

Philopsophy: Writing Beyond the Prison is founded upon the belief that writing is more than the production of the written word. Rather, it is a process that involves reflection, conceptualization and self-realization that can be truly transformative. When shared with the wider world, writing moves beyond an act of individual consciousness and self-expression to become a communal exchange that creates knowledge, empathy and recognition of shared conditions.

Project Components: 

Living Archive digital repository that preserves the writings of system-impacted authors for use by scholars, teachers, policymakers and others who desire a deeper understanding of the broad social impacts of the carceral ecosystem;

Writing Beyond the Prison interactive website that contextualizes the writings and brings them to a broad audience; 

Herstory Beyond Bars, an innovative, empathy-based online memoir writing curriculum
for use in prison settings.

Collaborative Team:

Ivan Kilgore, incarcerated writer, activist and Founder of United Black Family Scholarship Foundation
Erika Duncan, Founder and Creative Director of Herstory Writers Network
Humanities Institute at Stony Brook University
Robert Chase, Associate Professor of History at Stony Brook University
Zebulon Miletsky, Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Stony Brook University
Susan Scheckel, Associate Professor of History at Stony Brook University

Stony Brook University Students Project Assistants:

Willie Mack, Project Coordinator, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History

Sarah Ahmedani, Ph.D. student, Department of History
Miranda Argyros, B.A. student, Department of English,
Michael Barone, Master's candidate, Department of History
Anthony Gomez, Ph.D. candidate, Department of English
Kara Laurene Pernicano, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Alexandra Sun Velez, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History
Gabriel Tennen, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History

With thanks for support from:

The American Council of Learned Societies
National Endowment for the Humanities
Humanities Institute at Stony Brook University
Center for Changing Systems of Power at Stony Brook University
Office of the Provost at Stony Brook University
Sir Run Run Shaw Fund at Stony Brook University