College in Prison: Reading in an Age of Mass Incarceration

Debut author Karpowitz explores the value of liberal arts education and the nature of incarceration as the two strands join in the Bard Prison Initiative, a college-in-prison program that specifically aims to recreate the liberal arts college experience in multiple prisons in New York. His account draws on his personal experience as an instructor and administrator in the program. Karpowitz moves between scholarly examinations and novelistic narrative recreations of his classes that allow the students’ voices (albeit filtered) to be heard. The structure of the narrative fluctuates, sometimes connecting general themes such as the relationship between race and incarceration to specific classroom sessions and student experiences, while at other times only recounting significant past events, such as the first full-scale graduation ceremony. The book feels like it can’t quite decide on a genre. Karpowitz falls a bit into the memoirist’s trap of having every ordinary classroom session and conversation include a teachable moment or student epiphany. Taken as a whole, however, these stories provide a fresh representation of the imprisoned, highlighting their heterogeneity and humanity and convincing the reader to fight against “the well-meaning but insidious bigotry of low expectations.”[em] (Feb.) [/em]