PMA Professor Bruce Levitt will be giving a talk called “The Spaces in Between: Serendipity, Storytelling, and Transformation in the Carceral State” to the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine on May 18.
This talk explores the way a single story traps the incarcerated individual in a traumatic environment while at the same time, that same story is employed to reinforce the necessity of the carceral state in the public's mind.
Through a very brief gesture to the ontology of space and our reliance on "concrete knowledge" that limits our perceptions, this talk takes a deeper dive into storytelling, transformation and the Phoenix Players Theatre Group at Auburn Correction facility, and, by so doing, suggests ways and methods to create alternative stories about prisons and those who are confined in them. Finally, the talk makes the claim that artistic practices in prisons are fundamental to altering the narrative that most incarcerated individuals internalize during their incarceration.
Read more about the event.
Read more about Bruce Levitt.
Read more about the Phoenix Players Theatre Group.
