Author: screemer

PEP Informational Session

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The PEP hosted an informational session during week 7 to share information about this rich educational opportunity. Katie Dwyer, Coordinator for the Prison Education Program, started the session by sharing information about the PEP and all that it entails. Interns Miriam and Monique then gave introductions about the upcoming courses. Miriam and Monique will be the Outside learning assistants for winter courses; in this role they assist with administrative tasks, preparing feedback for Inside students, and transportation of Outside students to the correctional institutions.

PEP participants Kyle and John, both former students, were also in attendance. Students who were considering taking an Inside-Out class were able to ask Kyle and John questions and hear about their lived experiences and their enthusiasm for Inside-Out classes. It was really special to have these two men, who were leaders with the UO while inside, are now thriving and continuing to advocate for education now that they are back in the community.

This event was a great success. We had an incredible 72 applications for 26 open spots in Winter Inside-Out courses, SOC 410 “Social Inequality” with Ellen Scott and GEOG 445 “Culture, Ethnicity, and Nationalism” with Shaul Cohen.

Inside-Out Impact – A Reflection from an Outside Student

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The following is a reflection from Bella, a past Outside student who took Inside-Out “Autobiography as Political Agency” with Professor Anita Chari.

“There are some expected highlights to an Inside-Out class; I knew I would gain a different view of the criminal justice system and some perspective on life from people with very different lived experiences than mine. I never imagined the most significant benefit the program would have in my life, teaching me how to foster meaningful connections with others. We often live in a world that is full of artificial constraints. On a college campus, everyone is often rushing onto the next thing in their busy schedule. Class is often just one more thing to check off of a to-do list, and even when you do show up prepared, oftentimes, others are stressed or tired or distracted, leading to conversation that is dull or repetitive. There are social pressures to perform but not stand out, sound intelligent and well-informed but not superfluous, and say the right things around the right people. When I was taking my Inside-Out course, none of these typical distractions or pressures were present, and I could show up fully as myself. Everyone worked hard to get into the course and was passionate about gaining the most from it.

We spent much time in every class sharing our stories. When engaging in these deep conversations with classmates, I could show up and be fully present, sharing my experiences and carefully listening to them. Many Inside students shared how they learned to survive and thrive in their environment. Most were my age when they went to prison, and instead of finding their identity on a college campus, they did it behind bars. They spoke on the importance of community, intentionality, and showing up for others. Their presence in our classroom echoed these values, and I found myself inspired by the value they gave to our class in their lives. The paths of high-achieving college students and incarcerated people often do not cross, and the mere fact we were able to share a classroom was an incredible gift. Since there were no superficial similarities in our lives, our conversations skipped “small talk” and dove deeper into our core stories and values. The connections forged from these conversations were deep and meaningful, we bonded over our shared humanity. I’ve since tried to practice bringing the elements of connection I forged with my classmates into my everyday life. I try to show up for others intentionally and be present when trying to get to know someone better or catch up with a friend. Instead of engaging on superficial topics, I ask deep questions and try to create environments free from distractions where one can be comfortable and free to be themselves. Most importantly, I am intentional to share with others the incredible connections I experienced with Inside students so that they too can see those who society views as flawed outcasts through a lens of shared humanity.”

Winter 2024 Inside Out Courses

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We will have two Inside-Out classes in Winter 2024, applications due Monday, November 13th. Submit your application via Google form here.

There is an optional informational session with the Prison Education Program coordinator and recent Inside-Out students in Room 282 in the Law School at 4pm on Wednesday, November 8th. Please come learn about the program, even if you aren’t able to take a winter term class!

Inside-Out classes take place inside a prison, with an equal number of campus-based students and incarcerated (“inside”) students. Classes are discussion based and have had an incredibly positive impact on both the outside and inside students. Because of the drive time to Salem and the process of entering and leaving the institution, the total time involved is 4pm – 10pm one day each week. The class itself goes from 6:00-8:30. Learn more about Inside-Out class offerings. The two winter term classes are:

GEOG 445 “Culture, Ethnicity, and Nationalism” with Professor Shaul Cohen on Mondays at the Oregon State Penitentiary
SOC 410 “Structural Inequality in the US: Schools, the labor market and the criminal justice system” with Professor Ellen Scott on Wednesdays at the Oregon State Correctional Institution

Many past participants have reported that these classes are some of the most interesting, engaging, and transformative they have taken.

Please email uoprisoned@uoregon.edu with any questions!

New Series of PEP TV

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This week PEP TV Season 5 is being sent out to the 12 prisons in the Oregon state prison system. PEP TV compiles recorded guest lecturers, tutorials, and faculty talks on a broad range of subjects and sends these to all Oregon prisons to be shown on their TV channels. Our intention is that all 12,000+ people who are incarcerated here might access something educational and interesting that strikes a chord or leads to deeper conversations. PEP TV was created early in the pandemic with support from The Mellon Foundation, and we hope will continue to grow over time. 

Season 5 includes twenty-two segments with a wide range of topics from budgeting seminars created for our program by the University of Oregon Financial Wellness Center, to academic talks about environmental changes from the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, and speeches about current events from Jeff Merkley, the United States Senator for Oregon. PEP TV is deeply rooted in the Humanities and a diverse range of topics and perspectives. 

View the full PEP TV Season 5 Guide

Start of a New Year at the Prison Education Program

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Another year is off to a start at the Prison Education Program! This year the PEP is excited to have its largest group of interns it has ever had–a whopping 14 in total to help us tackle our many projects and programs. To kick off the school year, our intern and professional staff team met to learn about the work the PEP does, to generate ideas for the year to come, and to start building community together.

The day consisted of lots ice breakers including a wagon wheel (one-on-one conversations between each intern) and sharing lunch together. We also had a thorough discussion of Sister Helen Prejean’s work Dead Man Walking and interns shared updates from summer projects.  Lots of brainstorming for upcoming projects, outreach, fundraising, and events occurred throughout the day.

The PEP is looking forward to the year to come!

Fall 2023

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MATH 112/ Precalculous II: Trigonometry/ Professor AJ Rise

A course primarily designed for students preparing for calculus and related disciplines. This course explores trigonometric functions and their applications as well as the language and measurement of angles, triangles, circles, and vectors. These topics will be explored symbolically, numerically, and graphically in real-life applications and interpreted in context. This course emphasizes skill building, problem solving, modeling, reasoning, communication, connections with other disciplines, and the appropriate use of present-day technology.

 

CHN 410/510/ Dream of the Red Chamber/ Steve Durrant

Few would dispute the claim that the 18th century masterpiece Dream of the Red Chamber (also known as The Story of the Stone) is the greatest novel to have ever been written in China. The novel can be read primarily as a story of a love triangle, as an account of the decline of a wealthy aristocratic family, as the story of a Peter Pan-like boy who refuses to grow up, as an account of the interactions between Confucianism on the one side and Daoism/Buddhism on the other, as a kind of cosmic drama, as a virtual encyclopedia of Chinese culture in the 18th century, or in all of these ways at once. It is so rich that an entire discipline, known as “Red Studies” (Chinese hongxue 紅學) has developed around this text. For us, reading Dream presents a problem: the novel is approximately 2500 pages in its English translation. Students will read a 320-page abbreviation of the novel and then read a series of sample chapters in their entirety. There will be a considerable amount of reading, perhaps 750 pages, but students will leave the class with a good idea of this novel, and, I hope, an adequate foundation to become true “dreamers” by continuing on to read the entire text, should they wish to, in the years ahead.

GEOG 410/510/ Geography of the Mexican-American Borderland/ Professor Scott Warren

This regional geography course explores the environment, history, culture, politics, and economy of the United States and Mexico borderland. The borderland is a contact zone where cultures come together and break apart, where multibillion dollar industries exist alongside intense poverty, and where crises and problems (both real and imagined) seem to never end. As a geography course, we are especially interested in the relationship between people and place in the borderland, and how people’s lives are impacted by the international line. In this class we will put the problems of the border into a larger context and move toward a deeper understanding of this important region.

 

PSY 407/507/ Asking Psychological Questions and Interpreting Psychological Answers/ Professor Inga Schowengerdt

Learning how to think like a scientist about psychological issues will change your life because this ability is uniquely empowering, allowing people to evaluate data and claims about why people feel, think, and act the way they do. We all want to understand the psychology of ourselves and each other better, and people skilled in thinking like scientists about these questions can engage confidently with psychological research and writing because they understand how such research is conducted, how data is reported, how to draw their own conclusions about data and assess others’ claims and interpretations. When you are able to see psychological phenomena and findings in this way, you are also less likely to be misled or manipulated by bad research, pseudo-science, or misinformation, or to make common errors in judgment. It is a key skill set for those who want to increase their critical agency in an interconnected and data-driven world.

ENG 410/510/ Writing Life: Autofiction, Memoir, and Finding Truth through Fiction/ Professor Amanda Knopf


A common understanding of fiction is that it is made up, not real. Autofiction, or autobiographical fiction, is a genre in which the boundaries between “real” and “fictional” are blurred, as are the lines between author and character. In this course, students will explore the limits of these boundaries and genre labels, the literary possibilities that arise when they are removed, and the ways in which textual fabrication can lead to deeper truths for both readers and writers. Students will read memoir, fiction, autofiction novels, and narrative and critical essays that focus on this genre. Students will write an analytical essay on the style, narrative structures, and themes in the works they read, and the course will also engage writers in the practice of crafting personal narratives that incorporate elements of fiction, encouraging creative and emotional freedom and generating openings into more complex, more real stories. In her book In the Margins, Elena Ferrante writes, “We fabricate fictions not so that the false will seem true but to tell the most unspeakable truth with absolute faithfulness through the fiction.” Our goal as a class will be to use fiction to probe our own truths, expand our understanding of the truths inherent in fiction, and glimpse the power of writing our own stories.