 |
 |
Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture PRINT CULTURE COLLOQUIUM “The Underground Book Railroad: Women Prisoners and the Art of Reading” Megan Sweeney Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies (DAAS) Dept. of English Language & Literature and Dept. of Afroamerican and African Studies University of Michigan Wednesday, April 20, 2011, 5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. School of Library and Information Studies Library, Room 4191 Helen C. White Hall 600 North Park Street University of Wisconsin-Madison Drawing on her recently published book, Reading Is My Window: Books and the Art of Reading in Women’s Prisons (University of North Carolina Press, 2010), Sweeney will discuss how women prisoners use the limited reading materials available to them to come to terms with their pasts, negotiate their present experiences, and reach toward different futures. Foregrounding the voices and experiences of African American women—one of the fastest growing yet least acknowledged populations in U.S. prisons—Sweeney will explore the modes of reading that women adopt when engaging with three highly popular genres: urban fiction, narratives of victimization, and self- help books. Her talk will also situate contemporary prisoners’ reading practices in relation to the history of reading and education in U.S. penal contexts, highlight the material dimensions of women’s engagements with books, and analyze the many kinds of encounters fostered by book discussions in prisons. Reading Is My Window is the winner of the 2011 Emily Toth Award for Best Single Work in Women's Studies from the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association. Supported by the Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture, School of Library and Information Studies, University Lectures Committee, Department of Afro-American Studies, Department of English, Legal Studies Program, SLIS Jail Library Group, Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, and the Wisconsin Print Culture Society. Christine Pawley Ph.D. Professor & Director, School of Library and Information Studies http://slisweb.lis.wisc.edu/~cpawley/ Director, Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture http://slisweb.lis.wisc.edu/~printcul/ University of Wisconsin-Madison 4238 Helen C. White Hall 600 N. Park St. Madison, WI 53706 phone: 608 263-2945/608 263-2900 fax: (608) 263-4849 email: [log in to unmask] *********** LIS: Libraries, Information, and Sustainability http://uw-slis-sustainability.blogspot.com/