Category: News

Remarks from Jamie Bufalino for Kevin’s GSS Graduation

Posted on by kdwyer6
Remarks by Jamie Bufalino, Department Head for General Social Sciences
6/22/2023
It is my great privilege to be here today to celebrate Kevin’s achievement of the bachelor’s degree in General Social Sciences from the University of Oregon.
The general social sciences program allows students to develop social scientific reasoning by analyzing various types of texts addressing a particular social issue or institution. One of the benefits of the program’s topical focus is that students take courses from many different departments and examine a single problem from a multitude of different perspectives. They apply numerous different methods, qualitative and quantitative, to considering some of the most pressing challenges facing U.S. society and the world today.
Along with many other UO students, Kevin has taken courses concentrated on issues related to crime, law and society.  Each student’s path to a GSS degree is unique, but Kevin’s path mirrors that of many students in that he has taken courses from across the social sciences and been taught by some of UOs most dedicated teacher-scholars. He has completed courses in sociology, political science, anthropology, geography, planning, public policy, and management family and human services, among others.
I’d like to invite us to reflect on the intellectual journey you have taken and to bear witness to your hard work as well as the effort of those who have nurtured and supported you, many of whom are here today. While each person’s intellectual journey is unique, there are common experiences shared by students pursuing a liberal arts degree. For instance, it allows us to take leave of our everyday reality and explore new worlds of ideas, uncover the complexity beneath previously unexamined truths, discover the inner workings of the systems the influence our society, and critically reflect on the interplay between our society’s highest ideals and its daily practices. It connects us with other people in profound ways by allows us develop insight into and empathy for people whose experience differs from our own. Some of those people are our instructors and our classmates, some the authors and subjects of the works we examine. And ideally, it allows us to turn our gaze inward on reflect more deeply on our own lives.
Embarking on this intellectual journey is an act of courage. It requires us to submit to an ongoing process of seeing beyond ourselves, and that process changes us forever. Kevin, your dedication to your studies over many, many years and your incredibly strong academic record bring us to this moment. This degree, then, is exemplary of your incredible commitment to expanding your understanding of the world around you. It also highlights your meaningful participation in the intellectual community of the prison education program, including your fellow students and your instructors who have benefited from your many insights.
In my years directing the GSS program I have found the prison education program to be a transformative experience for both inside and outside students. As we celebrate your accomplishment today, I want to thank you are the profound impact you have made on those who have made this journey with and also thank Katie and Shaul and everyone who makes it possible for students to come together to learn from one another.
Congratulations!!

Sister Helen’s Virtual UO Visit

Posted on by kcarls10

On May 11th, our program had the honor of virtually welcoming Sister Helen Prejean to the University of Oregon. Sister Helen joined students, faculty, and community members in Lillis Hall via Zoom, as she had just arrived back to Louisiana after sharing time with Richard Glossip in Oklahoma prior to his scheduled execution. She spoke to a group of over 100 attendees with high spirits following Glossip’s stay of execution, remarking that she did not even need a plane to fly back to Louisiana; her hopes and happiness carried her home.

Sister Helen inspired us all with her remarkable stories of resilience, perseverance, positivity, and passion. She discussed news and updates following her time with Glossip, thanking those who worked so tirelessly on his case. Prejean told stories of wonderful and devoted people she met through her career, and shared with us some snippets of her path to where she is today. 

“I was in over my head, and it made me learn. You have to have knowledge, you have to read, and you have to be a part of a community. You can’t do it by yourself. Justice is a long haul, you don’t see overnight changes. But the gift you get is the people you meet along the way… that’s the gift that rewards us.” 

Senator Michael Dembrow, who joined us online, opened the question-and-answer portion by speaking to Sister Helen about prison education in Oregon. She was excited to hear about the work we are doing here, and was happy to hear of Dembrow’s support. Sister Helen took a moment to recognize the value of Inside-Out courses, and urged the audience to take advantage of opportunities that humanize those who are incarcerated. 

“Learning is what keeps you alive, and keeps fueling your heart.”

Sister Helen took time to respond to several UO students and professors as they asked questions about her line of work, the criminal justice system, and broader issues of human rights. One student asked what someone who is passionate about this work, but might not know how to get involved or make changes should do. To this, Sister Helen responded with an invitation to keep learning, keep connecting with people, and keep that fire inside you. 

“How do you know you’re doing what you need to be doing? Your heart keeps firing up. As you meet people, and as you learn about this, as you wake up, and as you grab hands with the community to work for change.” 

The work Sister Helen Prejean engages in is not easy. She is often with people during some of the hardest times of their lives; and yet, she still manages to lead with kindness, love, and a touch of Southern humor. We are greatly appreciative of her for making time to share her wisdom and insight with our community. 

“To be awake to human rights is not darkness, it is light. You are lucky to be young and beginning to be awake. You could have spent your whole life not being awake. To be awake is a great grace. You have agency in your life, you’re not stuck behind bars, you have some agency and some freedom to do some good in the world. And that’s the light.”

Watch Sister Helen’s talk here.

 

Ducks Give Day

Posted on by kcarls10

Today is Ducks Give – a day when alumni and friends of the UO come together to raise funds to support programs across campus – and the UO Prison Education Program is participating for the third year! 

 

What have we done this year? 

  • Held 6 Inside-Out classes and 19 other classes 
  • Brought ​over 90 UO campus-based students, faculty, and staff into classes in the prisons, and served ​over ​450 incarcerated people 
  • Celebrated another two additional people completing their Bachelor’s Degrees while incarcerated 
  • Expanded our network of partnerships on campus and in the community 

Our work changes lives. We hope you will support us as we expand, deepen, and innovate our programs. Help us continue to grow with a gift to the Prison Education Program today.

 

Current fundraising efforts: 

  • Providing new support for people re-entering the community  
  • Purchasing graphing calculators for students at the Oregon State Penitentiary 
  • Support for our 6 continuing interns, and the 4 we will select next week (!) 
  • Purchasing books for classes  

 

Share this email with your network and encourage them to do the same, then watch the page for updates in real time, as we grow our family of supporters. Together, we will empower individuals to learn, lead, and contribute to the community through the Prison Education Program.

 

Thank you!

https://ducksgive.uoregon.edu/giving-day/74586/department/74609

Internship Application for 23/24 Open Through May 17th

Posted on by kcarls10
Announcing: Prison Education Program internship applications open for our internship for the upcoming year! Applications are due May 17th by 11:59pm

University of Oregon’s Prison Education Program is opening applications for our 2023-2024 Internship. Our interns help us with all elements of our program, providing support for in-person classes inside the prisons, distance learning, in-person events, communication, research, logistics support, etc. We are seeking students who are passionate about this kind of work, will be flexible in a changing work environment, have the emotional maturity to work in difficult spaces, work as a team but also be able to do independent projects, and are able to abide by a range of rules that make our work possible. We encourage non-traditional students and people with lived experience with the justice system to apply. You must be a current, full-time UO student, and unfortunately Graduate students with GE appointments cannot be program interns.

If you are interested, please apply here. A more detailed description of the position is also in the application.

Additional questions can be sent to Katie Dwyer at kdwyer6@uoregon.edu 

Apply to Spring Inside Out Classses

Posted on by kcarls10

FALL 2023 / THE ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY / HC444/431H / DAWN MARLAN

Institutions manage and process people. Medicine, like many institutions, tends to define people in terms of their problems – disease, drugs, mental illness. Fiction inverts this structure, seeing character as something that transcends problems. Fiction tends not to diagnose, pathologize, or moralize. And while medicine leans toward closure (a cure, death), narrative’s drive toward resolution is most satisfying, I would argue, when the questions that drive the narrative remain, to some degree, unanswered, retaining mystery.

 

The new field of Narrative Medicine, inaugurated at Columbia University by a team of doctors, scientists, literature and film scholars, and fiction writers, begins with the premise that medicine centrally involves a nuanced human exchange mediated by language, specifically narrative. A patient tells a story, and a practitioner interprets, retells, alters, and “concludes” it, often without doing justice to the complexity of such an exchange, the power relationships that animate it, and without recognizing the ways in which “closure” eludes us. Institutions are designed to solve problems, not multiple them. Yet by imposing closure prematurely, science “ignores the ethical demand out of which it arises,” namely, its commitment to doubt, uncertainty and ignorance, hallmarks of scientific inquiry. The promise of narrative medicine is that literary values and techniques of interpretation can answer this ethical demand in multiple ways: by restoring attention to the ambiguity and nuance, which fruitful narrative exchanges require; increasing tolerance for uncertainty; sharpening powers of observation and reflection; developing awareness of our affect and its interference in interpretation; building cooperation and trust in relationships that are traditionally hierarchical; respecting different forms of knowledge and experience; adopting a practice of radical listening, and fostering creativity. In this course, we will study some of the most striking and innovative short stories in various linguistic traditions and periods alongside theoretical materials that will help us to better understand the elements of narrative and the principles of Narrative Medicine. By focusing on moments of ambiguity and problems of closure, we will accept the Jamesian challenge laid out in The Art of Fiction: “Try to be one of those on whom nothing is lost.” Assignments will be both interpretative and creative.

Application: Application Inside-Out Fall 2023 – Dawn Marlan CHC (1)

FALL 2023 / CLIMATE JUSTICE / ENVS410/510 / MARK CAREY

How do different groups of people live with, or sometimes die from, climate change impacts? Who produces the knowledge to grapple with climate change — and who doesn’t? How is climate change experienced, understood, studied, and managed in different ways depending on race, class, gender, age, and geography? These are the kinds of questions this course tackles to learn about environmental justice, about the unevenness of climate change, and about ourselves. The course will grapple with these issues across many places worldwide: from coastlines and mountains, to prisons and Antarctic icebergs, to farms and food. While the course will examine theoretical and scientific aspects of climate, the justice emphasis asks us to think also about ethics, morality, and fairness. Ultimately, this helps us reflect more profoundly on how people interact with and influence not only our planet but also each other.

Application: Application-Inside-Out-Fall2023_ENVS-ClimateJustice-Carey (1)

Sister Helen Prejean Visiting the UO in May

Posted on by kcarls10

The University of Oregon’s Prison Education Program invites you to a public talk by award winning author Sister Helen Prejean. A longtime advocate for the poor and disenfranchised, Sister Helen is an international leader in the movement to abolish the death penalty. For over 40 years, Sister Helen has been a voice for people on death row, their families, and the families of their victims. She joins the UO community to share her insights on our country’s justice system. We hope to see you there!

 

Community Request: Feedback on PEP’s 3rd Art Show

Posted on by kdwyer6

In 2022, Prison Education Program collected feedback from our community and beyond on Resonance: Art from Inside. We compiled the feedback into a booklet that we mailed to the artists who generously donated their talents to the show. Along with photos of their art displayed in a gallery for hundreds of students to see daily, the artists received photos of community members enjoying the closing reception and individual feedback on the art pieces they donated. Those that received these booklets expressed their gratitude for being able to see their work on UO’s campus, and for the written feedback provided on their art. The feedback was a connection to the outside world, it gave them confidence, it made them smile. 

Now, we are doing the same. Sense of Place: Art from Inside is currently on display in the EMU, and we are asking you, our community, to help us gather feedback to the artists who donated their work to the exhibit.

 

We are asking for your support by providing your feedback on as many of the show’s pieces as you’d like! Please share this request widely, we appreciate your support!

 

Click the link here to be connected to a Google Form. This Google form will ask for your name and email, and then it will allow you to view each piece in the exhibit. Take a moment to share your thoughts on as many or as few pieces that you can. Share words of encouragement, tell the artist how their piece made you feel, compliment their color choice — whatever feels right.

OR

 

Click on the title of each piece in this slideshow to be connected to a Qualtrics Survey where you can leave feedback.

 

If you are local to the University of Oregon campus, please join us this Thursday 3/9 at 6pm in the Adell McMillam Gallery on the 2nd floor of the EMU. Light refreshments will be provided. All are welcome.

poster displaying abstract art and information regarding art show. feb 6- march 9. sense of place: art from inside

Oregon State Legislature on Higher Education in Prisons

Posted on by kdwyer6

Last month, our very own Prison Education Program Director, Shaul Cohen, testified to the Oregon State
Legislature on higher education in prisons. Shaul was invited to the legislature’s House Committee on
Judiciary on behalf of University of Oregon’s Prison Education Program. Legislative committees are
focused groups of Oregon’s legislators who are appointed across political parties to bring bills to the
Senate and House floor.

 

The law-making process in Oregon is dependent on committees, where much of
the work to shape legislation and influence public policy actually occurs. Public hearings held by
committees offer lobbyists, press, members of the public and legislators not appointed to the given
committee an opportunity to submit written or verbal public testimony on certain issues. This legislative
session features several bills with the potential to impact prison education, and thus we are closely
tracking committee meetings and are grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with folks at the Capitol.

Shaul’s presentation to the Judiciary committee included background information on higher education in
prisons across Oregon and specifics of UO’s PEP, including the numbers of students and faculty engaging
in inside-out classes, art exhibits, LEAP packets, and future directions of the program. The
Representatives in attendance listened intently as Shaul outlined the central components of PEP as well as
the importance and benefits of prison education.

 

You may access the full video recording of the
committee meeting at this link:
https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/mediaplayer/?clientID=4879615486&eventID=2023011197.

 

If you are interested in tracking the progress of committee meetings or any anticipated bills this session, you
may find more information on the Oregon Legislative Information System site: Oregon Legislative
Information System (oregonlegislature.gov).

Sense of Place: Art from Inside

Posted on by kdwyer6
Sense of Place is a creative exhibition of the artwork created by over 20 artists who are incarcerated in prisons across the state of Oregon. In recognition of the incredible talent of these artists, the University of Oregon Prison Education Program and the EMU Center for Student Involvement Visual Arts Team have worked in conjunction to exhibit their work to the outside world. We are deeply grateful to these artists for donating their work for all of us to view, ponder, and enjoy. 

Each piece has a survey linked on the title. Please take a moment and give feedback to our artists inside. We will be creating a post-show brochure for our inside artists which will include photos of the exhibit and feedback from the community. After sending their art to us months ago, any thoughts you have to share with our artists will be truly meaningful. Please feel free to distribute this presentation with your community and share about the gallery in the EMU, we greatly appreciate as much feedback on the art as possible. 

Sense of Place will be on display at the EMU’s Adell McMillan Gallery February 6 – March 19 with a closing reception on March 9. All are welcome. 

 

Sense of Place Artist Statements & Survey Presentation

Apply to Upcoming Spring 2023 Inside Out Courses!

Posted on by kdwyer6

SPRING 2023 / AUTOBIOGRAPHY AS POLITICAL AGENCY / HC431H / ANITA CHARI

This class explores the autobiography as a form of both personal and political expression.  We begin by complicating, questioning and demystifying the divide between the personal and political by linking personal stories and histories with narratives of broader social structures, such as capitalism, patriarchy, slavery, and colonialism. We will read autobiographies from diverse sources, including letters, quasi-fictionalized autobiographies, poetry, and autobiographies of political activists.  We will also engage with theories of social structure and agency in order to theorize the interface between personal experience and political agency.

In this course, we will view the autobiography as a vehicle for making personal experience something that is politically significant.  The autobiography, one could say, births political agency, hence our course title, “Autobiography as Political Agency.”  Therefore, we are reading autobiographies to think about how the autobiography as a form creates possibilities for both individual and collective agency.

Application: Spring-2023-Application-Inside-Out-CHC-431H-Autobiography-as-Political-Agency-1

SPRING 2023 / CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY / GEOG444 / SHAUL COHEN

Cultural Geography provides a lens for studying popular culture in all its guises, and can be a key tool for understanding the cleavages in society that are referred to as “culture wars”.  Culture, as a human construction, is always dynamic, and always contested.  In this course we will develop the approaches and determine the questions that help us to understand where culture comes from, where it’s going, and how it is determined, shaped, represented, and challenged, from place to place, people to people, time to time.  Culture is power, culture is politics; how can we understand it, and influence it, as it unfolds around us? As we work through the course we are going to explore layers relating to place, space, landscape, identity, and power.  What are these things/processes, how do they work?

In addition to course readings, we will draw upon the world “out there”; landscapes, buildings, magazines, literature, music, dance, film, television, discourse, and so on, to bring many cultural geographies into view.  Your primary task is to read and participate in discussions, to respond in writing to the prompts that I will give you, and to be looking for illustrations of our themes in the world around you.

Application: Spring-Application-Inside-Out-Spring-GEOG-444-Cultural-Geography

SPRING 2023 / ETHICS AND LITERATURE / HC421H / STEVEN SHANKMAN

We will read Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad, the recently (2019) translated “prequel” to Life and Fate, and Is it Righteous to Be?, a series of interviews with the 20th-century’s greatest philosopher of ethics, Emmanuel Levinas (1905-1995). Life and Fate, a panoramic novel modeled on Tolstoy’s War and Peace, was a work of literature that Levinas often referred to in his writings of the last fifteen years of his life. “The essential thing in this book is simply what the character Ikonnikov says – ‘There is neither God nor the Good, but there is goodness’ – which is also my thesis.” Grossman (1905-1964), like Levinas, is careful to distinguish ethics from politics and he, like Levinas, insists that, even in the wake of the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism, goodness is still possible.

 

We will discuss Grossman’s novel in the context of Vladimir Putin’s current and brutal invasion of Ukraine, and we will note the moral and tactical significance of the fact that, in Grossman’s Stalingrad, Russia (or, more precisely, the Soviet Union) is being invaded by Nazi Germany, in contrast to the current war, in which Russia is the invader.

 

Application: Spring-2023-Application-Inside-Out-CHC-421H-Ethics-and-Literature

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