Previous Courses

Join us for an exploration of the American Juvenile Justice system from its beginnings in the early 19th century, to its contemporary form today. We will examine the social, political, economic, gender and racial perspectives that have influenced juvenile justice policy throughout its history, and continue to shape policy today. The concept of “parens patriae” (the state as parent) was the fundamental ideology that guided the origins of the juvenile justice system, but recent Supreme Court cases, as well as contemporary brain research are challenging old norms. Researchers and Think Tank progressives are suggesting the juvenile justice system should be drastically changed in order to improve the outcomes for youth involved in the system, and we will end the course by looking at current reform efforts.

In this course, we will consider the intersections of race, gender and class and how they are experienced in, and how they shape institutions, such as the labor market, social welfare system, schools, and the criminal justice system, for example. We will read ethnographies to examine the politics of race, class and gender in the United States.
The class will be entirely discussion-based. We will conclude by employing the concepts from the course to examine our own lives through the lens of the institutional structures studied (work/economy, education, family and friendship networks, criminal justice system). This will constitute the core of the final essay for the course.

This course explores social change and conflict resolution through the lens of autobiography by incarcerated individuals whose stories and experiences influenced social movements and conflict situations. We will focus on three case studies: the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and the US during the Civil Rights era and today.

All interested students must complete an application and an interview with the instructor. Classes are held at the Oregon State Correctional Institution with an equal number of UO and incarcerated students. Students must agree to abide by the rules and policies of the Department of Corrections and the rules of Inside-Out and the UO’s Prison Education Program. These rules will be discussed at length in a pre-class meeting. Holding classes in a prison offers unique opportunities for depth of discussion and diversity of experiences, and also is a complex emotional space.

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is one of the greatest and most influential masters of the novel. The Russian literary classics of the nineteenth century, including the novels of Tolstoy, made a profound impression on Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995), perhaps the greatest modern philosopher of the centrality of ethical obligation to what it means to be human. We will carefully read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, paying special attention to what the novel has to say about ethics understood in Levinas’s sense: my inescapable responsibility for a unique and irreplaceable other. We will read Ethics and Infinity, a reasonably accessible and brief series of interviews with Levinas, and we will look for connections between Tolstoy’s fiction and Levinas’s thought. We will consider how Anna’s otherness is sacrificed, in Tolstoy’s novel, to a notion of religion that is divorced from ethics, a notion of religion that Emmanuel Levinas labels as “primitive”: “Everything that cannot be reduced to an interhuman relation,” Levinas writes in Totality and Infinity (79), “represents not the superior, but rather the forever primitive, form of religion.” Anna’s husband Karenin’s dogmatic – and, perhaps paradoxically, at the same time “primitive” – understanding of Christianity makes it impossible for him to hear Anna’s voice, to see her face, to register her otherness, her alterity. Tolstoy’s critique of conventional religion as a silencing of lost voices is sounded again and again throughout the remainder of his career as a writer and thinker.

This is an Inside-Out class: half the students (“inside” students) will be those who live inside OSCI and the other half (“outside” students) will be from UO’s main campus.

How do we know who we are?  Identity is a story that we tell ourselves, and that is told to us, and about us, and is made up of many strands that continue to unfold in and around us.  In this course we will draw upon elements of popular and folk cultures to examine some of the stories that contribute to American identities.  Our materials will range from traditional sources such as “classic” literature to the immediacy of graffiti, and we will bring as many voices into conversation as we can.

The course will be inside a prison, thus access to some types of media will be restricted, but our class will be far more diverse than a campus class in many ways.  This will give us an opportunity to consider issues such as authenticity, authority, inclusion, and exclusion, as we try to discern the processes and forces at work in the “construction” of the American sense of self (selves).

In keeping with the pedagogy of Inside-Out, our time in the prison will be devoted primarily to dialogue and exploration, and we will draw upon academic readings and song, poetry, film and television, art, architecture, religion, politics, landscape, food, and on our accumulated impressions about this country and its many facets and communities.  Each participant in the course will be expected to draw upon their own experiences to inform our conversations.

This is an Inside-Out class: half the students (“inside” students) will be those who live inside OSCI and the other half (“outside” students) will be from UO’s main campus.

Join us for a critical exploration of the restorative characteristics of creating community through fundraising and grant making, from the perspectives of historically marginalized populations. While there has always been a strong thread of socially responsible philanthropy in the U.S., recent critics have urged more attention paid to equity and inclusion, and to the restorative qualities that result when marginalized populations conduct philanthropy themselves. This class is groundbreaking in that it combines several bodies of literature in a new way that will certainly be interesting, educationally challenging, and perhaps life- changing.

Using the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program model, this course will include both student living inside OSCI (“inside” students), and students from the University of Oregon (“outside” students). This course will take place inside the OSCI in Salem. Inside and outside student will study alongside one another.

This is a transformative learning experience that emphasizes collaboration and dialogue, and invites students to consider the differential effects of America’s system of philanthropy, and how to create new forms of sustainable philanthropy.

This course will explore concepts in intercultural understanding as well as building skills in conflict resolution, cross-cultural work, coalition building, and individual self-reflection. We will examine both the broad frameworks for discussing cultural differences as well as thinking through the ways identity and context influence our experience of the world and our encounters with one another. Conflict resolution theories and skills will be a major focus. We will also discuss intercultural encounters in a variety of specific contexts, including education, the workplace, and in medical care. We will ground these concepts in our own experiences, and include real-world applications in our own lives.  To get to the Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem we will leave campus at 4:00 in the afternoon, returning by 10:00.

Join us for a critical and engaging discussion about the principles and practices of Restorative Justice. Through course dialogues and activities we will explore the needs and roles of victims, offenders, communities, and justice systems, as well as outline the principles and values of Restorative Justice. Assumptions about—and labels given to—all those involved will be examined.

Using the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program model, this course will include both “inside”(students inside OSP) and “outside” students(students at UO). This course will take place at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem. This is a transformative learning experience that
emphasizes collaboration and dialogue, while inviting students to address crime, justice, and other issues of social concern.

The modern political system organizes the world into countries, and countries are often identified as belonging to nations.  Nationalism is an expression of belonging to a state, it roughly defines the land, people, and institutions that constitute the members of the state, according to that state. Ethnicity is an organizing mechanism that operates somewhat differently.  It too is an expression of belonging, and is composed of elements of culture, history, and identity that make its members distinct, but ethnicity is a cultural force that usually operates at a scale smaller than a state, and an ethnic group can exist in multiple states simultaneously, and within a state with other ethnic groups.  This course will address the powerful human constructs of nationalism and ethnicity, and examine the dynamics that mark societies that are made up of more than one ethnic group, as well as the increasingly rare parts of the world in which there are more monolithic societies.  It will focus on the tensions that individuals, families, communities, cultures, and countries experience when national and ethnicity are in tension.  Significant attention will be given to the experience(s) of the United States, and additional cases from around the world will be introduced.  Through readings, exercises, writing, and dialogue, students will learn about the some of the effects of nationalism and ethnicity in our own lives, and the lives of those around us.