Symposium 

Shakespeare has been in American prisons for the last forty years, in arts programs and college-in-prison classrooms. Even as the landscape of incarceration has shifted—from the War on Drugs to the Fair Sentencing Act, from prison reform to prison abolition—Shakespeare programs have endured. Too often, attention to these programs highlights their power to rehabilitate incarcerated people. Such narratives of “redemption” do not capture the complexity of what it means to teach and learn Shakespeare inside of the carceral system. 

The symposium involves diverse voices and perspectives on the impact of encountering Shakespeare in prison. Explicitly, this panel asks: What are the most important considerations today for people teaching or studying Shakespeare in carceral settings? What expectations, both about Shakespeare and about incarcerated people, are imposed on these encounters? How can we reexamine histories of incarceration through links between past and present?