Join the Lehman Center for American History in conversation with authors Michelle Daniel Jones and Elizabeth Nelson on their work on archives, research, and the history of incarceration in America.
What if prisoners were to write the history of their own prison? What might that tell them—and all of us—about the roots of the system that incarcerates so many millions of Americans?
In this groundbreaking and revelatory volume, a group of incarcerated women at the Indiana Women’s Prison have assembled a chronicle of what was originally known as the Indiana Reformatory Institute for Women and Girls, founded in 1873 as the first totally separate prison for women in the United States. In an effort that has already made the national news, and which was awarded the Indiana History Outstanding Project for 2016 by the Indiana Historical Society, the Indiana Women’s Prison History Project worked under conditions of sometimes-extreme duress, excavating documents, navigating draconian limitations on what information incarcerated scholars could see or access, and grappling with the unprecedented challenges stemming from co-authors living on either side of the prison walls. Learn more about this project at https://www.whowouldbelieve.com/
Michelle Daniel Jones is an advanced doctoral student in the American studies program at New York University. Her dissertation focuses on creative liberation strategies of incarcerated women and the Alabama Prison Arts and Education Project. As an organizer, collaborator, and subject matter expert she creates opportunities to speak truth to power and serves in the development and operation of taskforces and initiatives to reduce harm and end mass incarceration.
Elizabeth Nelson is an assistant professor in the Medical Humanities and Health Studies Program at Indiana University–Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI) and an adjunct assistant professor of Africana studies and history.