About the Symposium
Video: Inma Mateos and Nick Tomlonovic
Incarcerated in Iowa: University of Iowa Prison Projects Symposium
University of Iowa – University Capitol Centre
Conference Center -- Second Floor
Saturday, September 6th, 2014
10 am - 5 pm
Seizing on the recent academic movement toward publicly engaged scholarship and a growing interest within the University of Iowa in our state’s prison system, Incarcerated in Iowa brings together professionals, volunteers, scholars, and students for a day of lectures and discussions linking the University community with the carceral community. The goal of this event is to create, develop, and reinforce the wide array of connections between these not-so-disparate communities. Participants range from seasoned prison volunteers, to scholars working within the justice system, to former inmate-students. Incarcerated in Iowa provides a meeting ground for all prison-related projects at the University, at whatever stage they may be—whether a long-established prison choir or the first stirrings of a research idea.
Through a daylong series of lectures, presentations, and break-out discussion sessions, we will explore Iowa prison-community partnerships in their current state and collaboratively design a roadmap for the future of these current and potential relationships.
Events will include:
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Opening remarks invoking public engagement by University of Iowa Professor Carolyn Colvin
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Lecture from Director of the Iowa Department of Corrections John Baldwin
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Presentations about an assortment of different prison-related University projects, including information on prison libraries, memory projects, and prison-related coursework by University faculty
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Brainstorming sessions about possible future projects, with guiding help from the day’s presenters and lecturers
About the UI Prison Projects Coalition
The University of Iowa Prison Projects Coalition includes courses, programs, and projects contributing to vital, sustainable public goods that improve the lives of Iowa's incarcerated and enlarges the academic range of scholarship, engagement, and service between the University, the Iowa Department of Corrections, and the community at large. Partners in the coalition enter with the intention of learning from one another.
Partners in the UI Prison Projects Coalition acknowledge the crisis demonstrated across the nation, and its manifestations here in Iowa, of the world's largest population of incarcerated individuals. As scholar Doran Larson has argued, the population of people in prisons in the US right now—not jails, not parole, just prisons—creates the fourth largest city in this country, larger than Houston, Dallas, or Philadelphia. We can no longer pretend not to see this "city." Its population impacts all of us, but how is the free population impacting them? What are we doing to acknowledge, support, and reverse this growing population? What are we doing (and not doing) that contributes to this growing crisis? The UI Prison Projects Coalition provides a platform for the University of Iowa and its neighboring communities to recognize what is being done, and where the gaps are in providing support, expertise, and hope to Iowa's incarcerated and underserved populations. We partner with the Iowa Department of Corrections in supporting successful reentry as our top priority.
Partners in the coalition will craft a mission statement that defines our shared goals. That creative process will begin at our first annual "Incarcerated in Iowa" Symposium, on September 6th, 2014.
Members of the Oakdale Community Choir rehearse at Iowa Medical and Classification Center in Coralville, IA