Do not be fooled by this slim volume and its mere 135 pages – though it be but little, it is fierce. This is a mighty book. Eleven short but substantial essays contributed by sixteen scholars comprise this book, which details several Classics-based educational programmes taught to incarcerated people in the United States. There are a wide range of approaches detailed here, and yet this is a very cohesive volume with its contents stressing four discernible interconnected themes. These are: descriptions of how these programmes were devised and structured with candid examinations of their effectiveness; honest appraisals of the value of ancient literature and culture to those who are among the most marginalised in our societies; enthralling reports of the profound experiences many instructors had while teaching in prison; and a willingness to confront some of the most pressing issues facing Classics today.
The Editors, Capettini and Rabinowitz, introduce the book with some jarring indicators: while the US makes up 4% of the global population it has almost 25% of the world's prison population. Several essays in the book remind us of how this is a direct result of the legacy of slavery, structural racism and continuing social inequalities in the US. Then there is the incredibly high rate of recidivism at almost 70%. One notable statistic cited is that formerly incarcerated people who earn either an associate or bachelor's degree while in prison have a whopping 43% lower rate of recidivism than those who do not. Additionally, prison college education has been shown to save a great deal of money.
If these programmes are so tremendously effective, why do they serve only 6% of incarcerated people in the US? They are beginning to expand, something that Covid has recently delayed, and Classics-based programmes have formed an important part of these initiatives. But should Classics be a part of the syllabus of prison education? Capettini and Rabinowitz do not baulk from this question, asking whether and to what extent incarcerated people find meaning in the classical materials they study. In many ways this thought-provoking book brings into sharp relief the kind of important reflective questions many are asking about the future role of Classics in an educational system that could one day be socially equitable. J. Wright goes further: in mounting these kinds of programmes, even with the best intents and purposes, she asks, are we ‘instrumentalizing incarcerated students toward the renewal of our discipline’ (p. 123). This kind of tough but truthful question is an example of what makes many of these essays so breathtakingly refreshing. Several of the contributors detail their perceived successes as well their failures and their anxieties about how the traditional methods and hierarchies of academia and Classics operate in carceral environments. This tension between what many academic subjects, including Classics, have represented (classism, elitism, misogyny, whiteness, violence, colonialism, exclusivity etc.) and the power of the material to inspire people in the most extreme circumstances is one of the things that make this book such urgent and compelling reading. These tensions are not just theorised, but articulated by contributors who have walked the walk and experienced them in action.
Space limitations preclude offering comments on each of the eleven essays, except to say they are all well worth reading and offer a variety of perspectives. E. Dugan and M. Umachandran detail how they taught a course on classical mythology to incarcerated men at a maximum-security prison in New Jersey. Their method was to take a comparative approach placing Greek and Roman materials in dialogue with Near Eastern and biblical texts. Their students’ questions were profound: why do ancient texts matter in the modern world? And as one older prisoner said, ‘isn't this white man's mythology?’ The authors are candid about their experiences: for example, they ask whether, when placing an Islamic text (in this case the Qur'anic flood story) alongside Ovid, were they just ‘reaffirming the sense that these students could not find themselves reflected in the core material?’ (p. 113). We learn how they navigated these kinds of situations by creating spaces for questions, and their realisation that their students possessed other important skills that were not initially identified by following a standard rubric for competency in Classics. Their honest reflections are compelling and reflexive as they ask: ‘have (we) been trained in ways that compound some of the inequalities we were seeking to undo?’ (p. 119). Likewise, several of the contributors articulate how troubling some of their assigned texts were in the light of the ongoing personal trauma of their students and the sexual violence that permeates so many classical works. A. Pappas, influenced by poet and trans/queer activist Nat Raha, used classical works to highlight how structures can perpetuate inequalities, focusing their students at the gender non-conforming pod at the San Francisco County Jail on collective experience rather than narratives of personal transformation. This essay among several others also describes the challenges of mounting a college-based course in prison where the students have no access to the internet, very few books and even a limited amount of writing materials. These educational disparities are magnified when N. Dib and O. Faccani detail how they conducted a correspondence course based on Ovid's Baucis and Philemon and the difficulties in not being able to create a classroom community. Yet when the pandemic hit, they show how they were able to use that experience to pivot to a correspondence course based on Euripides’ Trojan Women and allow their incarcerated students to continue with their education when so many other programmes were simply shut down – there is no Zoom in prison.
In committing to teach in prisons it seems clear that these scholars have already stepped out of what J. Wright calls ‘the echo chamber of Classics itself’ (p. 127). Wright also offers a blueprint for the future direction of Classics-based programmes in prison and writes about leveraging the cultural capital in Classics while also opening the space for incarcerated students to help shape their courses. M. Morgan and Z. Price, both drama professors, taught Homer's Odyssey as an applied theatre project in California and write about several points of contact they found between the ancient material and the young, incarcerated people they were teaching. For them the Odyssey reflected the identity of people on the margins struggling with the concepts of home. They recognise it as a canonical work, but see it as a text that has ‘entrances for people at the margins and the outskirts’ (p. 88). They also note that a classical text in these kinds of programmes can be invigorated and reinvented. The people who they describe as not the primary voices in society can ‘breathe fresh life into it’ and in turn ‘own it as a narrative’.
What stands out in all these essays is the time commitment, intellectual energy and willingness to work in unfamiliar and often difficult surroundings, and the emotional toll that the instructors experienced in developing and teaching these classes. Yet what comes across is their humility, a willingness to adapt and the many genuine attempts to equalise the pedagogical experience for their incarcerated students. S. Scully in recalling his experiences teaching mythology and Greek literature in Norfolk Prison in Massachusetts found empathy between the students and the texts they studied. Similarly, when A.E. Johnson and L.M. Slatkin conclude their paper with the exhortation ‘teach in a prison; it will open your world’ (p. 51), one senses that their experience has not only led them to some new conclusions about the works they teach but also to come face to face with the realities of structural racism and the dehumanisation that is an integral part of the prison system in the United States. E. Allen-Hornblower explains how her work at Riker's Island in New York, and in prisons in New Jersey, led to additional programming for the formerly incarcerated, programmes she describes as ‘but a small cog in the wheel of redressing countless imbalances’ (p. 17). Often in this book we are reminded of the real value of the Humanities in opening spaces where people even in the most extreme of circumstances can think about being human. Yet as E. Bobrick poignantly reminds us, ‘no one's sense of their own humanity should depend on keeping in good graces with a jailer, or on the social conscience of a university's administration and faculty’ (p. 29).
Yet, for all this considerable effort, what is the academy doing to recognise such vitally important work? D.-E. Padilla-Peralta touches on this, mentioning the postdoctoral opportunity that placed him in a structured programme that focused on Humanities in prison. Notwithstanding, he writes of the professional anxiety he felt when considering the commitment required. How would this work be viewed by others in positions to affect his future career? Would it even be valued? To be sure, we have seen positive movement in this area with new graduate courses and fellowships aimed at public-facing humanities. Whatever we might call it – outreach, community engagement, public programming –, there can be no doubt that these efforts must now be regarded as essential to the future of Classics and the Humanities more broadly. But this book also shows that the information trajectory flows both ways: incarcerated people are helped towards a degree and future positive prospects, while the scholars learn far more about the texts they teach and benefit from new perspectives. It is hardly an equal relationship, though, between the professor and the prisoner as the contributors often point out, yet there is much we can all learn here about how to start to deconstruct these kinds of power imbalances that have kept so many away from our field. Dugan and Umachandran capture this vividly when they relate how one of their incarcerated students turned in his course evaluation attached to photocopies of Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
What then might be the future for this kind of programming and the academy's relationship to it? Will these new public Humanities courses and initiatives lead to a reappraisal of the value of such work for a scholar's career? Might we envision a time when such outreach is valued as part of a tenure file or a promotion case and not just as additional work piled on? Might we perceive the classical scholar's role not only as teaching within academia but also deploying ancient material in a way that might help to redress some of the historical injustices that produced this monster of a carceral system in the first place? We should all read this muscular little book – not only because it poses many prescient and even existential questions about the place of Classics in the world today, but also because it might just inspire a lot more of us to get out there and engage.
