The participants in this interchange were brought together by Stevie Wilson, in the face of consi... more The participants in this interchange were brought together by Stevie Wilson, in the face of considerable logistical challenges. Wilson lives behind prison walls-with standard electronic modes of communication not available or quite circumscribed. In particular, e-mail access was limited. Messages cost money to send and were limited to two thousand characters-more than Twitter, to be sure, but not conducive to scholarly communication. E-mail correspondence was also subject to screening from prison authorities and could take days to reach Wilson. Nor could Wilson receive attachments or access the Internet. Despite these obstacles, Wilson recruited the participants and, over the course of 2022, was able to assemble their contributions. He and the JAH editors worked together to formulate the questions and issues that structured the dialogue, with Wilson having the final say. The JAH editors worked with all the contributors, but only to pose queries and use standard editorial practices to refine prose. This fascinating and powerfully significant interchange is, therefore, primarily a product of the prison workshop, relying most of all on Wilson's determination and steadfastness. The contributing editors and the JAH thank Garrett Felber for his generative role in this interchange, particularly in connecting the editors with Wilson, and are indebted to all the participants for their willingness to enter into this conversation:
This essay explores the prison as an archive by focusing on an emerging digital humanities projec... more This essay explores the prison as an archive by focusing on an emerging digital humanities project about the history of prisons. The Washington Prison History Project (WPHP) began with the donation of two decades of records of prisoner activism; it includes an assortment of correspondence, self-published newspapers, photographs, and even a text-adventure computer game that was first designed in prison in the late 1980s and which the authors have recreated. The authors—a professor, a recent alumna, and two librarians—describe the origins and development of the project as a counter-archive of prison. Drawing on artifacts from the project, they argue that this alternate archive provides a means to teach, learn, and interpret the prison from the perspective of incarcerated people and their supporters and loved ones.
International Journal of Communication, Jun 8, 2011
At the end of my freshman year in college, in May of 2000, a friend and I made a decision that wo... more At the end of my freshman year in college, in May of 2000, a friend and I made a decision that would shape our lives for the next three years: we started a radical newspaper. The global justice movement had come to the United States the previous November, with mass protests shutting down the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in the fall and another large demonstration targeting the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington, D.C., in the spring. Buoyed by those protests and carried along by the exciting activism around us in Florida and throughout the South, we hoped that a quarterly newspaper might help consolidate the efforts and focus the attention of a new generation of social justice
This article reads social movements into the story of the American carceral state in two ways. Fi... more This article reads social movements into the story of the American carceral state in two ways. First, rather than see mass incarceration as emanating only from the war on drugs, I locate it within a broader framework of political repression of radical movements. Second, I argue that there is a new social movement against imprisonment on the rise. This burgeoning movement pursues what I call a strategy of decarceration that combines radical critique, direct action, and tangible goals for reducing the reach of the carceral state.
The participants in this interchange were brought together by Stevie Wilson, in the face of consi... more The participants in this interchange were brought together by Stevie Wilson, in the face of considerable logistical challenges. Wilson lives behind prison walls-with standard electronic modes of communication not available or quite circumscribed. In particular, e-mail access was limited. Messages cost money to send and were limited to two thousand characters-more than Twitter, to be sure, but not conducive to scholarly communication. E-mail correspondence was also subject to screening from prison authorities and could take days to reach Wilson. Nor could Wilson receive attachments or access the Internet. Despite these obstacles, Wilson recruited the participants and, over the course of 2022, was able to assemble their contributions. He and the JAH editors worked together to formulate the questions and issues that structured the dialogue, with Wilson having the final say. The JAH editors worked with all the contributors, but only to pose queries and use standard editorial practices to refine prose. This fascinating and powerfully significant interchange is, therefore, primarily a product of the prison workshop, relying most of all on Wilson's determination and steadfastness. The contributing editors and the JAH thank Garrett Felber for his generative role in this interchange, particularly in connecting the editors with Wilson, and are indebted to all the participants for their willingness to enter into this conversation:
This essay explores the prison as an archive by focusing on an emerging digital humanities projec... more This essay explores the prison as an archive by focusing on an emerging digital humanities project about the history of prisons. The Washington Prison History Project (WPHP) began with the donation of two decades of records of prisoner activism; it includes an assortment of correspondence, self-published newspapers, photographs, and even a text-adventure computer game that was first designed in prison in the late 1980s and which the authors have recreated. The authors—a professor, a recent alumna, and two librarians—describe the origins and development of the project as a counter-archive of prison. Drawing on artifacts from the project, they argue that this alternate archive provides a means to teach, learn, and interpret the prison from the perspective of incarcerated people and their supporters and loved ones.
International Journal of Communication, Jun 8, 2011
At the end of my freshman year in college, in May of 2000, a friend and I made a decision that wo... more At the end of my freshman year in college, in May of 2000, a friend and I made a decision that would shape our lives for the next three years: we started a radical newspaper. The global justice movement had come to the United States the previous November, with mass protests shutting down the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in the fall and another large demonstration targeting the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington, D.C., in the spring. Buoyed by those protests and carried along by the exciting activism around us in Florida and throughout the South, we hoped that a quarterly newspaper might help consolidate the efforts and focus the attention of a new generation of social justice
This article reads social movements into the story of the American carceral state in two ways. Fi... more This article reads social movements into the story of the American carceral state in two ways. First, rather than see mass incarceration as emanating only from the war on drugs, I locate it within a broader framework of political repression of radical movements. Second, I argue that there is a new social movement against imprisonment on the rise. This burgeoning movement pursues what I call a strategy of decarceration that combines radical critique, direct action, and tangible goals for reducing the reach of the carceral state.
... to my interviewees, whose open and honest discussions with me form the backbone of the book: ... more ... to my interviewees, whose open and honest discussions with me form the backbone of the book: Vi-cente Panama Alba, Ashanti Alston, Bill Ayers ... several interviews conducted for his film and pictures he had discovered in the course of his research, for which I'm most grateful. ...
... LETTERS ON LEADERSHIP | 161 Sarah Stillman Arthur Liou Kat Aaron SECTION III FUTURE: LETTERS ... more ... LETTERS ON LEADERSHIP | 161 Sarah Stillman Arthur Liou Kat Aaron SECTION III FUTURE: LETTERS TO THE NEXT GENERATIONS 175 10 LETTERS TO THE YOUTH OF TOMORROW | 177 Andrea Listenberger Andrew Curley Samuel Kass Kevin Etienne-Cummings 11 ...
... that different musical genres expressed certain hopes and fears of the generation.13 Challeng... more ... that different musical genres expressed certain hopes and fears of the generation.13 Challenging the belief, popular even at the time, that the 1970s was bleak, boring, or both—poet-radical Gil Scott-Heron said in 1973 that it was “winter in America,” and Peter Carroll titled his ...
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