Challenging the Prison-Industrial Complex: Activism, Arts, and Educational Alternatives - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252077709 ISBN 13: 9780252077708

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2010

Synopsis

Boldly and eloquently contributing to the argument against the prison system in the United States, these provocative essays offer an ideological and practical framework for empowering prisoners instead of incarcerating them. Experts and activists who have worked within and against the prison system join forces here to call attention to the debilitating effects of a punishment-driven society and offer clear-eyed alternatives that emphasize working directly with prisoners and their communities.

 

Edited by Stephen John Hartnett, the volume offers rhetorical and political analyses of police culture, the so-called drug war, media coverage of crime stories, and the public-school-to-prison pipeline. The collection also includes case studies of successful prison arts and education programs in Michigan, California, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania that provide creative and intellectual resources typically denied to citizens living behind bars. Writings and artwork created by prisoners in such programs richly enhance the volume.

 

Contributors are Buzz Alexander, Rose Braz, Travis L. Dixon, Garrett Albert Duncan, Stephen John Hartnett, Julilly Kohler-Hausmann, Daniel Mark Larson, Erica R. Meiners, Janie Paul, Lori Pompa, Jonathan Shailor, Robin Sohnen, and Myesha Williams.

About this title

About the Author

Stephen J. Hartnett is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado Denver. He is the director of the UCD College-in-Prison Program, served as the 2017 president of the National Communication Association, and is the editor of Captured Words/Free Thoughts, the annual arts and politics magazine. He has published ten books, including A World of Turmoil: The United States, China, and Taiwan in the Long Cold War (2021) and the coedited Imagining China: Rhetorics of Nationalism in an Age of Globalization (2017). His scholarship on international affairs has appeared in Presidential Studies Quarterly, the International Journal of Communication, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, the Taiwan Journal of Democracy, the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, and the Quarterly Journal of Speech. His journalism on U.S.-China-Taiwan relations has appeared in SupChina, Public Seminar, New Lines Magazine, and Communication Currents. He has served since 2016 as one of co-organizers for five conferences in Beijing, one in Shenzhen, one in Hong Kong, and one online conference in Shanghai (during COVID). He has been awarded the Kohrs-Campbell Prize in Rhetorical Criticism, the James A. Winans-Herbert A. Wichelns Memorial Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric and Public Address, the Association for Chinese Communication Studies’ Xiao Award for Outstanding Rhetorical Research, and the University of Colorado’s Thomas Jefferson Award.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0252077709
• ISBN 13: 9780252077708
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 312
• Editor: Hartnett Stephen John