"Humanities" Special Issue: "Twentieth Century American Literature"
SPECIAL ISSUE INFORMATION
It’s a statistic we hear often: the United States incarcerates more people per capita than any other nation. Yet, many U.S. Americans can go about their daily lives without thinking about their physical proximity to prisons or the people locked within. Prisons have become increasingly removed to rural, remote areas, set back from main highways, not visible from shopping centers, restaurants, and housing developments. Likewise, the U.S. political landscape works hard to obfuscate the realities of life locked up, reducing mass incarceration to shocking statistics. However, prisons remain hidden in plain sight, coming to life in American literature and film.