Special Topics in Nonfiction Writing: Fugitive Letters: The Prison Notebooks

U.S. carceral spaces are often sites of prolific writing and intellectual production. Yet letters composed by incarcerated individuals have been largely excluded from critical public conversations about institutional racism and prison reform. In this course, we will consider the prison letter as an important genre for racial, social, and economic justice. We will examine rhetorical choices made by prison writers to agitate, posit grievances, assert arguments, and advocate for institutional change. With this insight, we will exchange letters with prison reform activists currently or formerly residing in carceral facilities in the United States.