Global Prison Literature

Catalog description

This course examines the wide range of literary practice from the global prison industrial complex. In this class, students will engage the writings of early 20th-century political prisoners (Antonio Gramsci, Ho Chi Minh), mid-century resistence prisoners (Dennis Brutus in apartheid South Africa, anti-Picochet protestors in Chile), and contemporary writings by the families of prisoners across the globe. While many classes, including many of the syllabi archived at Duke University's Carceral Studies Network, engage the sociology and politics of the Prison Industrial Complex in the United States, this class will seek to take a more global, historical view of memoirs, letteres, poems, plays, and fiction written by prisoners in Italy, Vietnam, China and elsewhere to try to seek connections between globalization, incarceration, and aesthetics. Students will make in-class presentations and write in-depth papers that examine the evolving relationships between these areas of interaction.