Mr. Greco, the clerk to Ms. Schroeder, the JCI Librarian who organizes most of our logistics on the JCI side, has recently compiled some summary information on our program over the past few years, that I think is pretty impressive. In a nutshell, since 2010, folks involved with the JCI Scholars Program, and a number […]
Yay? Anyway, if you’d like to follow our work that way, you can find us @JCIPSP.
We had an interesting session of Game Theory and Game Design yesterday, but I’ll let Josh tell you about it (if we had trouble getting dice in, I think the materials for Mr. Twist’s favorite game – Kiss the Girls – are going to be even more of an issue). In the meanwhile, here’s another […]
Drew Leder writes: Why do I teach in prison? Well, I’ll give an answer (that might not seem so interesting) – because prison teaching is itself interesting. In oh so many ways. The men who I work with, some 30-40 in my classes, not counting 5-10 of my undergraduates I bring with me, are passionately […]
So, the Violence class. I’ve wanted to teach a course like this for a while, for two reasons. First, it’s a matter of professional interest to me – especially to look at violence as a phenomenon that cross-cuts issues that are often academically stove-piped (e.g., war, psychology of trauma, domestic violence). Second, it’s an issue […]
Rachel Donaldson writes: In class we have been reading Robert Heilbroner’s The Worldly Philosophers and this week we read the chapter on Thorstein Veblen. We began by discussing how Veblen’s economic views intersected with earlier economic theorists like Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, and Marx. Specifically, we examined how Veblen’s view that taking pride in work is a part […]
Since February our class of 25 students has gathered weekly to discuss questions around “what is crime?”; “why do people engage in crime?”; and “how might we prevent crime?” Students have responded to these questions through a series of essays and in-class discussion. Our last three class sessions included a group of 11 University of […]
This is a bit belated, as it relates to last Friday’s class (but I thought I should write it up before I leave to teach this Friday’s class). Josh has already put together a nice write-up of basically what this class is on about. But he’d asked me to write up our particular experience from last week, in […]
Mikita Brottman writes: Today we read the murder scene in “Macbeth,” and I was surprised how focused the men were. Each of them was following the text closely; some of them were even running their fingers along the lines and mouthing the words to themselves silently as the readers spoke their parts. The room was […]
The Daily Nous put up a nice discussion of teaching philosophy in prisons the other day. Drew Leder, Joshua Miller, and I were interviewed for it, in addition to some folks from other programs. All the bits except the questions to me are worth a read!