Welcome
Catalog short description: “Literature and Women” introduces students to the study of literature by and about women, with special attention to questions of gender in their social and historical contexts. Also listed as WGST 56. (4 units) Fulfills a diversity requirement.
“Literature and Women: Women’s Prison Writing” (ENG 68/WGST 56) is designed to raise awareness of and create inquiry and dialogue about incarcerated women writers and storytellers and their stories. Why women’s prison writing, you ask? To quote Michelle Alexander, “Our nation is awash in punitiveness, for reasons that have stunningly little to do with crime or crime rates. [. . .] During the past thirty years, our nation’s prison population has quintupled, while crime rates have fluctuated and today are at historical lows. [. . .] The staggering rates of imprisonment of black and Latino men in recent years have led many, including myself, to focus their advocacy work and research on addressing the plight of men profiled and brutalized by the police, and put in prison. Women inside the criminal justice system, meanwhile, are often mentioned as an afterthought, if at all. The omission is inexcusable. Today, women are the fastest growing segment of the prison population, and the most vulnerable. The overwhelming majority—over 90 percent—of women in prison have suffered sexual and/or domestic abuse, and have lived in extreme poverty. [. . .] The result is that our women’s prisons are filled with people from the poorest, most vulnerable and marginalized segments of our society, whose offenses are often a consequence of their circumstances: lack of access to employment, familial stability, drug treatment, and protection from sexual and physical abuse. And once in prison, abuse often continues for these women, who face sexual, physical, and mental abuse at the hands of prison staff.” (Inside This Place, Not Of It 12-13)
Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women are brave enough to tell their stories and have also inspired others to help spread their words and knowledge of their worlds. In our course, we will read them, listen to them, and watch their performances. We will be an audience to the voices of those who are too often considered invisible, though they are all around us, and too often perceived as silent, though they speak out. Through our readings, discussions, and assignments, we will think critically about the complicated institutions and social forces that govern incarceration, especially for women in our country. We will evolve collaboratively toward using our own voices to create dialogue on this difficult topic, and change, that spreads beyond the limits of our classroom and our short Fall term together. I look forward to working with all of you and getting to know you.
Learning objectives:
- Gain understandings of and ask questions about incarceration and gender in America. Then ask more questions. We will have far more questions than answers.
- Perform analysis of writing by women who were or are incarcerated toward the goal of Freire-ian dialogue about the text and the topic.
- Create challenging, critical, informed, and sensitive conversations about diversity issues including race, whiteness and white privilege, gender, ethnicity, class, disability, education, and more. We must get out of our comfort zones.
- Demonstrate research skills that attempt to answer our difficult questions with authoritative sources and creative approaches that are both scholarly and humanist.
- Reflect on our own identities in light of our reading women’s prison writing and about the prison industrial complex. What do these writers and artists and survivors teach us that we might not otherwise be able to see?
Course content warning & trigger warnings:
We will be studying texts on a weekly basis, in every class throughout the term, that might contain triggers for certain audiences. What is a trigger? A trigger is a graphic representation of a subject matter that could spur a mental health crisis for a reader or viewer. Reactions to personal experiences are nothing to be ashamed of, and our class learning community will be kind to one another as we grapple with this material together. Common triggers include representations of rape, violence, abuse, addiction, suicide, discrimination, or victim-blaming of any kind. The topics we will read about on a weekly basis also include physical and psychological suffering and unjust imprisonment. This course is different from most others in that nearly all of the texts we’ll study contain many of these troubling topics. We will approach them from a critical but also a deeply human and caring point-of-view. If you think it might cause you harm to read and/or talk about any or all of these topics on a regular basis, please contact me right away to discuss alternatives. Visit kirstynleuner.youcanbook.me to make your appointment or email me kleuner@scu.edu. I also include a link to Bronco Health and Wellness Guide, as it links to many wellness resources on campus.
Required Texts
| Davis, Angela Y. Are Prisons Obsolete? Seven Stories Press, 2003. |
| Freire, Paolo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th Anniversary Edition, Continuum, 2000. |
| Kerman, Piper. Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison. Spiegel & Grau, 2011. |
| Hylton, Donna. A Little Piece of Light: A Memoir of Hope, Prison, and A Life Unbound. Hatchett, 2018. |
| Jacobi, Tobi, and Kathleen Adams, eds. Women, Writing, and Prison: Activists, Scholars, and Writers Speak Out. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. |
| Levi, Robin, and Ayelet Waldman, eds. Inside this Place, Not of it: Narratives from Women’s Prisons. Verso, 2017. |
| Kushner, Rachel. The Mars Room: A Novel. Scribner, 2018. (Update: this is now OPTIONAL) |
All other texts will be provided electronically. Look on the Schedule page where the reading is due, and it will tell you where to find the electronic copy. It will either be linked right there on the schedule or it will say “Camino Files”.
COURSEWORK and GRADES
Your grades for each assignment will be delivered in Camino. Detailed assignment instructions will be delivered in class and posted online when the assignment is introduced. Check the course calendar for due dates.
- Reading Quizzes: 10% Throughout the term, I will give 6 reading quizzes. I drop the lowest score.
- Reading Leader: 10% Each student will be a reading leader for one of the assigned readings. For this, prepare a 2-page handout. On page 1, list salient points of the text and 3 questions for discussion, and on page 2, write a single-spaced reflection that includes how it relates to our other readings. Reading leaders will be assigned depending on enrollment and will begin during week 2.
- Letter Transcription Project: 20% Each student will select a letter at least 5 pages long by an author gendered female (if possible) to transcribe and resubmit to the American Prison Writing Archive. Transcription is harder than it sounds: it is scholarly editing. We will do this work in drafts and will also peer-review our transcriptions. Along with your transcription, you will submit a 4-page reflection essay on the transcription process and how this work relates to the texts and topics we’ve studied thus far. To build up to this, we will write a letter to a woman in prison. Detailed directions to follow!
- In-Class Participation: 20% Asking questions, reading passages aloud, engaging in debate, being demonstrably and genuinely inquisitive, collaborating actively and sensitively, demonstrating that you have done your reading and want to talk about it in relevant ways, helping classmates, and completing in-class writing activities. Each day, I take notes during class on students’ participation. You will also keep an online participation journal in a Google Form, submitted weekly, that supplements my notes. Both will be used to determine your participation grade. I start tracking participation in week 2 so everyone has a “warm-up” week.
- Mapping Incarceration, Gender, and SCU 20% This is a term-long project we will build together as a “Final” project. Each student will be responsible for finding at least one place on Santa Clara’s campus map or within range that relates to incarceration and gender historically or in our present. You will add this place to a map we build in Google Maps and a caption for it. You will also write a 3-page essay describing/detailing the importance of this place/event, why it should matter to the greater Santa Clara community, and how it pertains to our discussions and readings. As a class we will decide how to share our map so that it reaches and impacts an audience.
- Dialogical Reflection Essay 20%: This is critical, formal writing assignment, in polished prose and with a bibliography, reflects on what we learned this term in 6 pages or so. You will draft this essay slowly over the course of the term in shorter, informal journaling, reflections, and in dialogue with your classmates and their essays.
Grade Values
Note: Make an appointment to meet with me if you would like to improve your work and/or your grade. If you receive lower than a C grade, you are required to come meet with me after your graded work is returned to you. I’m here to help you improve and succeed. SCU policies on grades can be found here.G
- A 94-100: Outstanding work on every front that shows mastery of the material, a polished final product, and real thoughtfulness that meets and/or exceeds my expectations for the assignment. Bravo.
- A- 90-93: Excellent work.
- B+ 87-89: Very good work.
- B 84-86: You did a good job. This is above average and a good grade. Trust me!
- B- 80-83: Work that is overall good and that succeeds in some areas and needs help in others.
- C+ 77-79: Adequate work that shows slightly more than adequate effort but that needs help in many areas to be “good.”
- C 74-76: Adequate work that needs help in many areas to be “good.”
- C- 70-73: Somewhat adequate work that is slightly better than barely passing. Meet with me for help right away.
- D+ 67-69: Barely passing, almost adequate, and needs substantial work to be “good.” Meet with me for help right away.
- D 64-66: Barely passing. Meet with me for help right away.
- D- 60-63: Less than barely passing. Meet with me for help right away.
- F 0-59: Not passing. Meet with me right away. Let’s figure this out together.