The United States is now one of the most incarcerating nations in the world. The prison industry is growing at a rapid rate with increasingly higher percentages of African-American, Hispanic, and Native American men, women and teen-agers serving time. In many states, including Michigan, educational and recreational activities have been eliminated from the prisons. This class gives students the opportunity to work inside a prison, facilitating a creative arts workshop for men, women or adolescents. Readings, films and discussion provide background and training for working in a prison setting. Students work in small groups once a week at a local correctional facility or youth facility. The class meets once a week as a class to share art projects with each other, and to discuss films, reading material and issues that arise in the workshops. During the other three-hour block of class time, small groups meet for one hour each with the instructor for supervision and discussion.

You do not need to be a student at the School of Art and Design to  take the class, but you do need to have some experience with art.  You will need to get an override to register for the class.

English 310 teaches students to use their creative skills and social commitments to facilitate the powerful expressiveness of high school and incarcerated youth. It is rooted in respect for the youths' abilities and voices, in excitement about an educational process that promotes creativity, and in imaginative collaboration with the school and facility faculty, staff, and administration. Working two to three hours a week at Central, Cody, Crockett Technical, and Southeastern High Schools in Detroit, and at the Maxey Training School, Holy Cross Children’s Services, Boysville Campus, the Calumet and Lincoln Centers, and Vista Maria, students assist youth in creating their own plays, photographs, music, writings, art, etc. In two hour class meetings we discuss background reading, analyze and develop our work with the youth, and think out the implications of what we are doing. A further hour is devoted to meetings between each site team and the instructor. No exams.

Admission to the class is by interview and permission of instructor only.

This course teaches students how to use their creative skills and social commitments to facilitate the powerful expressiveness of high school youth and of incarcerated youth and adults. In-class exercises, improvisations, and discussion of theater and pedagogical texts prepare us to assist workshop participants in imagining and shaping their own plays. Students will work an average of two to three hours a week in one of a number of state correctional facilities located in Adrian, Chelsea, Detroit, Jackson, Ypsilanti, Lapeer and elsewhere, at Central, Cody, Crockett Technical, and Southeastern High Schools in Detroit, or at one of five juvenile facilities. An additional two hours is spent in class meetings, and a further hour is devoted to meetings between each site team and the instructor. No exams.  

Admission to the class is by interview and permission of instructor only.

In English 326, students work one-on-one with incarcerated youth, helping them create a portfolio of their writing and art to present to their judges, employers, teachers, and family members. Students go each week to one of four or five youth facilities. We will be reading from a variety of texts, and students will keep weekly journals, make weekly reports on their work with the youth, complete a final creative project, and attend meetings of the Prison Creative Arts Project every other Wednesday night 6:30-9:00pm.  

Interviews are required for admission to the course; students with some experience in youth facilities or with some understanding of youth incarceration will have priority, but others are definitely welcome as well — it is interest and commitment we're looking for.  

With 25 percent of the world's prisoners, the United States is the most incarcerating nation and has the longest sentences by far in the world. Thirteen percent of the U.S. population, African Americans are 50.8 percent of our prison population, and African American urban school drop-outs have been called the “mass incarceration generation.” In 1979, 1 in 14 Michigan state workers were employed in the state prison system; that peaked at close to 1 in 3 two years ago and is now being reduced. Michigan built over 30 prisons in 17 years. We have eliminated higher education, instituted longer sentences, and handed down harsher punishments over two decades and now are starting to see a small turnaround in state, though not federal, prisons because prisons have become too expensive. To most of us, prisons remain invisible places we ignore or know only through rumors, myths, and the speeches of politicians. This course will address prison reality and culture and the ways in which prisons are represented to us and to others. Discussions will focus on the works and their implications about personal attitudes and behavior and about social institutions. Expect journals and final projects. There will be no exams.