Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program: Alumni Facilitation Training for Building Communities

Presenter: Jordan Wilkie (Political Science)

Mentor: Steven Shankman

Oral Presentation

Panel A: “Enhancing Learning” Maple Room

Concurrent Session 1: 9:00-10:15am

Facilitator: Nedzer Erilus

The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program is an organization that introduces university courses to carceral institutions across the U.S. and Canada. To date, over 12,000 students have taken part in an Inside-Out class, where Outside (university) students and Inside (incarcerated) students learn as peers. Both inside and outside the walls, alumni have sought to continue their Inside-Out experience and have done so through a number of programmatic avenues. The purpose of this thesis is to establish a set of foundational documents for an organization that will encourage and direct the growth of alumni activities. It is a first, practical step in the formation of a mutually strengthening and informative organization of inside and outside students into an international Inside-Out Alumni Association. The Inside-Out Program offers college-level courses inside carceral institutions. In the metaphorical comparison where Inside-Out represents university classes, Alumni strive to represent student groups by creating programmatic, “extra-curricular” opportunities that enhance the educational process through skill-building and professional workshops. This thesis consists of three sections: a manifesto detailing the mission and vision of outside alumni, essential policy, training, and resource documents, and a critical research essay. These documents will combine to describe the importance of alumni work, a practical work- product detailing policy and resources for alumni, and a critique of Inside-Out and the subsequent Alumni Association.

Putting the Human Back in the Humanities: Studying Shakespeare Inside Prison

Presenter: Eve Hirschman

Mentors: Corbett Upton and Steven Shankman, English

Oral Presentation

Major: English 

Hamlet: Denmark’s a prison.
Rosencrantz: Then is the world one.
Hamlet: A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons…for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. To me, it is a prison.
-Hamlet, II.ii.261-70

Elizabethan England and Oregon State Correctional Institution, two places separated by substantial amounts of time and space, come together to provide new insight into the human condition in today’s world. After studying Shakespeare in a classroom environment consisting of equal parts UO students and Adults in Custody, it is clear that the benefits of a humanities education reach far beyond the world of Academia. Incorporating the ethical and moral implications that arise from engaging in literature and theory should be a cornerstone in how modern society approaches correctional institutions. Whether outside or inside prison, close proximity to the study of the humanities, especially works as psychologically and emotionally complex as Shakespeare’s, provides an important and unique opportunity to understand one’s relationship with society. A humanities education enhances one’s conception of their own humanity while unavoidably acknowledging that of the other. Not only do we need the human element in academic studies of the humanities, but also the incorporation of the humanities into institutions which play a part in defining what it is to be human.