In a time of increasing mass incarceration, US prisons and jails are becoming a major source of literary production. Prisoners write for themselves, fellow prisoners, family members, and teachers. However, too few write for college credit. In the dearth of well-organized higher education in US prisons, noncredit programs established by colleges and universities have served as a leading means of informal learning in these settings. Thousands of teachers have entered prisons, many teaching writing or relying on writing practices when teaching other subjects. Yet these teachers have few pedagogical resources. This groundbreaking collection of essays provides such a resource and establishes a framework upon which to develop prison writing programs. Prison Pedagogies does not champion any one prescriptive approach to writing education but instead recognizes a wide range of possibilities. Essay subjects include working-class consciousness and prison education; community and literature writing at different security levels in prisons; organized writing classes in jails and juvenile halls; cultural resistance through writing education; prison newspapers and writing archives as pedagogical resources; dialogical approaches to teaching prison writing classes; and more. The contributors within this volume share a belief that writing represents a form of intellectual and expressive self-development in prison, one whose pursuit has transformative potential.

This volume examines the nuance and complexity of teaching for greater social justice under surveillance and constraint. It presents an inquiry-based methodology for designing and implementing meaningful teaching and learning in literacy courses offered in American jails and prisons.

This volume makes a case for engaging critical approaches for teaching adults in prison higher education (or “college-in-prison”) programs. This book not only contextualizes pedagogy within the specialized and growing niche of prison instruction, but also addresses prison abolition, reentry, and educational equity. Chapters are written by prison instructors, currently incarcerated students, and formerly incarcerated students, providing a variety of perspectives on the many roadblocks and ambitions of teaching and learning in carceral settings. All unapologetic advocates of increasing access to higher education for people in prison, contributors discuss the high stakes of teaching incarcerated individuals and address the dynamics, conditions, and challenges of doing such work. The type of instruction that contributors advocate is transferable beyond prisons to traditional campus settings. Hence, the lessons of this volume will not only support readers in becoming more thoughtful prison educators and program administrators, but also in becoming better teachers who can employ critical, democratic pedagogy in a range of contexts.

As the work of Malcolm X, Angela Y. Davis, and others has made clear, education in prison has enabled people to rethink systems of oppression. Courses in reading and writing help incarcerated students feel a sense of community, examine the past and present, and imagine a better future. Yet incarcerated students often lack the resources, materials, information, and opportunity to pursue their coursework, and training is not always available for those who teach incarcerated students. This volume will aid both new and experienced instructors by providing strategies for developing courses, for creating supportive learning environments, and for presenting and publishing incarcerated students' scholarly and creative work. It also suggests approaches to self-care designed to help instructors sustain their work. Essays incorporate the perspectives of both incarcerated and nonincarcerated teachers and students, centering critical prison studies scholarship and abolitionist perspectives. This volume contains discussion of Mumia Abu-Jamal's Live from Death Row, Marita Bonner's The Purple Flower, Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and Othello.

Pedagogical Perspectives on Cognition and Writing addresses a scholarly audience in writing studies, specifically scholars and teachers of writing, writing program administrators, and writing center scholars and administrators. Chapters focus on the place of cognition in threshold concepts, teaching for transfer, rhetorical theory, trauma theory, genre, writing centers, community writing, and applications of the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing. The 1980s witnessed a growing interest in writing studies on cognitive approaches to studying and teaching college-level writing. While some would argue this interest was simply of a moment, we argue that cognitive theories still have great influence in writing studies and have substantial potential to continue reinvigorating what we know about writing and writers. By grounding this collection in ongoing interest in writing-related transfer, the role of metacognition in supporting successful transfer, and the habits of mind within the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing, Pedagogical Perspectives on Cognition and Writing highlights the robust but also problematic potential cognitive theories of writing hold for how we research writing, how we teach and tutor writers, and how we work with community writers. Pedagogical Perspectives on Cognition and Writing includes a foreword by Susan Miller-Cochran and an afterword by Asao Inoue. Additional contributors include Melvin E. Beavers, Subrina Bogan, Harold Brown, Christine Cucciarre, Barbara J. D’Angelo, Gita DasBender, Tonya Eick, Gregg Fields, Morgan Gross, Jessica Harnisch, David Hyman, Caleb James, Peter H. Khost, William J. Macauley, Jr., Heather MacDonald, Barry M. Maid, Courtney Patrick-Weber, Patricia Portanova, Sherry Rankins-Robertson, J. Michael Rifenburg, Duane Roen, Airlie Rose, Wendy Ryden, Thomas Skeen, Michelle Stuckey, Sean Tingle, James Toweill, Martha A. Townsend, Kelsie Walker, and Bronwyn T. Williams.

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.

The essays in Paul Ricoeur and the Hope of Higher Education: The Just University discuss diverse ways that Paul Ricoeur’s work provides hopeful insight and necessary provocation that should inform the task and mission of the modern university in the changing landscape of Higher Education. This volume gathers interdisciplinary scholars seeking to reestablish the place of justice as the central function of higher education in the twenty-first century. The contributors represent diverse backgrounds, including teachers, scholars, and administrators from R1 institutions, seminary and divinity schools as well as undergraduate teaching colleges. This collection, edited by Daniel Boscaljon and Jeffrey F. Keuss, offers critical and practical visions for the renewal of higher education. The first part of the book provides an internal examination of the university system and details how Ricoeur’s thinking assists on pragmatics from syllabus design to final exams to daily teaching. The second portion of the book examines the Just University’s role as a social institution within the broader cultural world and looks at how Ricoeur’s description of values informs how the university works relative to religious belief, prisons, and rural poverty.

After Plato redefines the relationships of rhetoric for scholars, teachers, and students of rhetoric and writing in the twenty-first century. Featuring essays by some of the most accomplished scholars in the field, the book explores the diversity of ethical perspectives animating contemporary writing studies—including feminist, postmodern, transnational, non-Western, and virtue ethics—and examines the place of ethics in writing classrooms, writing centers, writing across the curriculum programs, prison education classes, and other settings. When truth is subverted, reason is mocked, racism is promoted, and nationalism takes center stage, teachers and scholars of writing are challenged to articulate the place of rhetorical ethics in the writing classroom and throughout the field more broadly. After Plato demonstrates the integral place of ethics in writing studies and provides a roadmap for future conversations about ethical rhetoric that will play an essential role in the vitality of the field. Contributors: Fred Antczak, Patrick W. Berry, Vicki Tolar Burton, Rasha Diab, William Duffy, Norbert Elliot, Gesa E. Kirsch, Don J. Kraemer, Paula Mathieu, Robert J. Mislevy, Michael A. Pemberton, James E. Porter, Jacqueline Jones Royster, Xiaoye You, Bo Wang

Louis Owens: Writing Land and Legacy explores the wide-ranging oeuvre of this seminal author, examining Owens’s work and his importance in literature and Native studies. Of Choctaw, Cherokee, and Irish American descent, Owens’s work includes mysteries, novels, literary scholarship, and autobiographical essays. Louis Owens offers a critical introduction and thirteen essays arranged into three sections: “Owens and the World,” “Owens and California,” and “The Novels.” The essays present an excellent assessment of Owens’s literary legacy, noting his contributions to American literature, ethnic literature, and Native American literature and highlighting his contributions to a variety of theories and genres. The collection concludes with a coda of personal poetic reflections on Owens by Diane Glancy and Kimberly Blaeser. Libraries, students, scholars, and the general public interested in Native American literature and the landscape of contemporary US literature will welcome this reflective volume that analyzes a vast range of Louis Owens’s imaginative fictions, personal accounts, and critical work.

This volume focuses on teaching Classics in carceral contexts in the US and offers an overview of the range of incarcerated adults, their circumstances, and the ways in which they are approaching and reinterpreting Greek and Roman texts. Classics and Prison Education in the US examines how different incarcerated adults – male, female, or gender non-conforming; young or old; serving long sentences or about to be released – are reading and discussing Classical texts, and what this may entail. Moreover, it provides a sophisticated examination of the best pedagogical practices for teaching in a prison setting and for preparing returning citizens, as well as a considered discussion of the possible dangers of engaging in such teaching – whether because of the potential complicity with the carceral state, or because of the historical position of Classics in elitist education. This edited volume will be a resource for those interested in Classics pedagogy, as well as the role that Classics can play in different areas of society and education, and the impact it can have.