Colleges and universities have witnessed great shifts in student populations over the last few decades, including new populations of veteran  and adult students. Now, as the traditional aged student continues to decline in numbers, one additional population of potential students appears to continue to grow: prison inmate students. College prison programs include both credit programs and enrichment programs. Through programs such as Shakespeare Behind Bars, the recidivism rates have declined as the men and women in these programs discover empathy, a love of language, and the value of community. This panel will explore college prison programs.

Call for Symposium Proposals: Ecosomatics

We are inviting contributions to a three-day residential symposium at the Pierce Cedar Creek Institute in Michigan (April 23rd to 25th2020), funded and supported by the University of Michigan (Departments of English, Dance, Theatre, National Center for Institutional Diversity, Initiative on Disability Studies, Graham Sustainability Institute and the Program in the Environment) in collaboration with the Black Earth Institute.

In the wake of the recent Postcritical Turn in literary studies, a pall has been cast over suspicious modes of analysis. Eve Sedgwick famously sought to move away from the paranoid imperative towards a more reparative relation; Sharon Best and Stephen Marcus have proposed surface reading as an antidote to symptomatic methodology; and, more recent still, Rita Felski has underscored the banality of suspicious hermeneutics as a central premise in her circumscription of the limits of critique.

Chairs

Sanjukta Banerjee (York University)

Agata Mergler (York University)