Prison and Incarceration Research

Interdisciplinary Work-In-Progress Speaker Series, 2024 - 2025

Zoom image: Image: Cell Block 7, Eastern State Penitentiary, courtesy of Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.0. Image: Cell Block 7, Eastern State Penitentiary, courtesy of Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.0.

Image: Cell Block 7, Eastern State Penitentiary, courtesy of Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.0.

Fall 2024 - Spring 2025: Join us for the Prison and Incarceration Research (PAIR) Interdisciplinary Work-In-Progress (WIP) Speaker Series. The series is designed to strengthen campus research on one of the most pressing legal and social challenges of our time, mass incarceration. Each speaker offers unique perspectives on prisons, mass incarceration, and broader implications for legal institutions, society, and social policy. While highlighting the complexities of incarceration and its consequences, the series also actively fosters interdisciplinary connections among UB scholars.

Series Speakers

MONDAY (monthly, as listed)
509 O’Brian Hall, North Campus
Noon Reception
12:30 to 1:30pm Presentation

Access papers in advance of the event

Log-in to access WIP papers in advance (when available).

Fall 2024

  • September 9, 2024
  • October 7, 2024
  • November 4, 2024
  • December 2, 2024

Spring 2025

  • February 3, 2025
  • March 3, 2025
  • April 7, 2025
  • May 5, 2025

Series Organizer

September 9, 2024

Paul Feigenbaum (English) will present his WIP, "Prison Letter Exchanges: Writing Constraints, and Freedoms, on Both Sides of the Fence."

Gene Zubovich (History) will serve as discussant to get our conversation started. 

October 7, 2024

Keith Griffler (Africana and American Studies) will present his WIP, "“We Will Do Anything for Our Freedom”: Black Women in the Civil War and the Origins of Postemancipation Prison Labor in the South"

Erin Hatton (Sociology) will serve as discussant to get our conversation started. 
 

November 4, 2024

Allison Dwyer Emory (Sociology and Criminology), presenting " Navigating the Situation: Family Experiences of Jail Incarceration in Rural America."

Jarrett M. Drake (Africana and American Studies) will be the discussant.
 
Log-in to access the paper here.
 
Abstract: Jails occupy a distinct place in the criminal legal process where people are incarcerated amidst the transitions of pretrial processing, system entry and exit, and transfers of authority between different criminal legal institutions or the informal control of the community. This liminality creates a unique opportunity to examine how families make sense of the different and often contradictory roles available to them throughout the criminal legal process. Using qualitative interviews with family members and romantic partners of men detained in a rural county jail (N=41), this study examines how families navigate through the contradictions inherent to jail incarceration. Despite engaging with the same facility, families had very different experiences shaped by whether they undertook responsibility for managing the incarcerated person’s situation and whether they perceived the jail as a primarily restrictive or constructive institution. The intersection of these two constructs forms a framework for understanding how families made sense of both their part in the criminal legal process and the role of the system in addressing the underlying situations of their incarcerated family members.

December 2, 2024

Andrea Pitts (Comparative Literature) presents “Health Empires Behind Bars: Carceral Humanism and the Rise of Correctional Medicine" 

Victoria Piehowski (Sociology & Criminology) will be the discussant.

Log-in to access the paper here.

Abstract: Drawing from the prescient calls to action of radical organizations like the Young Lords of the 1970s, this presentation seeks to examine how health care and carceral industries have become intertwined. Starting with medical oversight of prisons and jails beginning in the mid-1970s, this presentation outlines the institutionalization of medical industries within carceral facilities. It argues that a post-civil rights era of medical racism has become further obfuscated under the terms of what James Kilgore and others describe as “carceral humanism.” According to Kilgore, “Carceral humanism recasts the jailers as caring social service providers.” This presentation thereby seeks to address the deep rift between humanist reforms and abolitionist projects, as the former seeks to address forms of suffering within existing institutional apparati, while the latter calls for the formation of new social and institutional configurations to end punishment industries altogether.

 

SPRING 2025

  • February 3, 2025, Veronica Horowitz (Sociology & Criminology)
  • March 3, 2025, D. Michael Applegarth (School of Social Work)
  • April 7, 2025, Jarrett M. Drake (Africana and American Studies)
  • May 5, 2025, Brian Whitener (Romance Languages & Literatures)

Series Poster

Zoom image: The Prison and Incarceration Research (PAIR) Interdisciplinary Work-In-Progress (WIP) Speaker Series is designed to strengthen campus research on one of the most pressing legal and social challenges of our time, mass incarceration. Each speaker offers unique perspectives on prisons, mass incarceration, and broader implications for legal institutions, society, and social policy. While highlighting the complexities of incarceration and its consequences, the series also actively fosters interdisciplinary connections among UB scholars. The Prison and Incarceration Research (PAIR) Interdisciplinary Work-In-Progress (WIP) Speaker Series is designed to strengthen campus research on one of the most pressing legal and social challenges of our time, mass incarceration. Each speaker offers unique perspectives on prisons, mass incarceration, and broader implications for legal institutions, society, and social policy. While highlighting the complexities of incarceration and its consequences, the series also actively fosters interdisciplinary connections among UB scholars.