Classics and Prison Education in the US

Emilio Capettini, Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000394436
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

This volume focuses on teaching Classics in carceral contexts in the US and offers an overview of the range of incarcerated adults, their circumstances, and the ways in which they are approaching and reinterpreting Greek and Roman texts.

Classics and Prison Education in the US examines how different incarcerated adults – male, female, or gender non-conforming; young or old; serving long sentences or about to be released – are reading and discussing Classical texts, and what this may entail. Moreover, it provides a sophisticated examination of the best pedagogical practices for teaching in a prison setting and for preparing returning citizens, as well as a considered discussion of the possible dangers of engaging in such teaching – whether because of the potential complicity with the carceral state, or because of the historical position of Classics in elitist education.

This edited volume will be a resource for those interested in Classics pedagogy, as well as the role that Classics can play in different areas of society and education, and the impact it can have.

Part I

Old texts, new classrooms

1 Reading the emotions inside and outside: classical Greek texts in prison and beyond

Emily Allen-Hornblower

Rikers Island. There is a man locked in his cell, banging the metal door with a cup, swearing and screaming. Other inmates are milling about the panopticon, but he has been confined to his cell. The correctional officers (COs) curse him out. Other inmates curse him out. To no avail. He’s making as much noise as he can, and his anger and frustration are palpable. I have just arrived in one of the jails (“housing units”) at Rikers Island, along with a group of actors, to perform a version (abridged) of Euripides’ Trojan Women, as preface to a conversation with the incarcerated men of that unit. I organized the event – the first of a series – with the support of a Whiting Seed Grant in Public Engagement, as well as the Just One Foundation (more on these events later).¹ The visit was made possible thanks to an initiative to bring the visual and performing arts into New York correctional facilities in a more systematic way, spearheaded by one man: Tommy Demenkoff.² Our event, we found out on arrival, was to be held in the Mental Observation Unit (MOU), where most of the men were wandering around their section of the panopticon with a lost look on their faces – some, we later discovered, knew close to no English. The man in his cell continued screaming right up until I began with some introductory remarks and background information about the Trojan War. My goal was to contextualize the play for the dozen or so prisoners who drifted around us, intrigued. Some came closer, sat down at tables or hovered close by for the entire performance. One even lay down on the ground in front of the actors, cupping his head in his hands. From the moment we started, the man in his cell stopped yelling. I could see him on the upper balcony row, his face pressed hard against the window-like opening of bars that provided a small lookout onto the inside of the panopticon through his cell door. He remained quiet throughout the performance and discussion – except when a group of COs yelled mid-play, “Medication, so and so!” over and over, once for each individual being administered medication. At that point, he shouted: “Shut the F*ck up! We’re trying to watch a f*cking play here!”

This man’s rage and entranced silence are as moving as they are unsettling a tribute to the power of theater and the Humanities. His response raises many essential points regarding the place of the Liberal Arts within our curricula; indeed, it touches on the place and role of the Arts and of Literature in our lives, and in our education – including, in this case, behind bars. Why and how did a play speak to this man when nothing and no one else had until then? Brutality and coercion did nothing for him; Euripides’ drama did. Was there something calming, even therapeutic (dare I say cathartic?) about watching Greek tragedy in performance – something in the words, the movements of the actors, or the cadence of the Chorus’s collective chants? The moment points in the starkest possible terms to the Humanities’ and Liberal Arts’ necessary and crucial place in every education. Reading, writing, or, in this case, viewing and hearing historical texts and literature in prison is not a luxury; neither is thinking about nor making Art. It is, rather, “a question of survival,” in the words of Jesse Krimes, a reentering citizen who spoke about the art he made while he served time.³ “It is about our dignity,” said Joseph Rodriguez, another formerly incarcerated man and avid photographer.

The MOU men with whom I discussed Euripides at Rikers were not my students. This was a “cold” visit, not part of a more extensive educational program. I had never been inside this housing unit before, nor met the individuals with whom we considered these texts. I was discouraged from getting any names, so I am unable to attribute any quotes; I can only relate some of their words and reactions. One of the men, the one who lay down on the floor in front of the performers, asked: “So … was all of this Zeus?” Indeed, that is precisely what the Trojan women state at the close of the play, as the walls of Troy crumble. To this he responded, “That damn m*ther f*cker started up all this bullsh*t and then just f*cking took off?” This man, who had been placed in the MOU of a Rikers jail, went straight to the existential question posed by countless suffering characters of Greek tragedy: after a desperate call to the gods to witness human suffering (“Zeus, are you seeing this?”) goes unanswered, the painful realization hits home: despite manifest divine indifference, “none of these things is not Zeus.”⁴ It later struck me: mutatis mutandis, if we replace Zeus with Society in this man’s words, the applicability of his statement to mass incarceration rings painfully true. We, as a society, fail the most vulnerable among us in countless realms, not least in the crucial realms of education, opportunity, and our penal system. We create this morass – and then we just … warehouse them and take off.

The visit to Rikers was a one-day gig and an outlier in that respect. The teaching I have done behind bars since 2015 has otherwise been for a full semester, as the sole instructor for a number of for-credit college courses on literature, history and culture (often ancient Greek), in two different men’s prisons in New Jersey: Northern State Prison (NSP, medium-security), and East Jersey State Prison (EJSP, maximum-security) in Rahway. I first learned about the possibility of teaching college courses behind bars somewhat by chance, when reading an interview of a student, Chris Etienne, in Rutgers’ Daily Targum. Etienne was pursuing an undergraduate education through Rutgers’ Mountainview Program after doing some time, and also going back to tutor his former peers behind bars.⁵ We met. I found out I could teach behind bars through NJ-STEP (Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons). I have taught several semesters since then – in the summer, early mornings, or at night.⁶

The men I have taught range in age from their 20’s to late 60’s. Roughly 90% are African-American. The length of their sentences varies; many are several decades long (my courses have mostly been offered at a maximum-security prison). The students are like other students in all fundamental ways, working diligently towards their degree, albeit with an especially noteworthy drive and pride in their education. Their dedication and passionate intellectual engagement with the material are all the more remarkable given their circumstances.⁷ They must overcome countless obstacles simply to read, write, think, and study, including sheer noise; limited access to materials outside of class (no computers or Internet; very limited access to books); and limited materials within our classrooms (a board; DOC pre-approved handouts, books, and images). Their resilience and ability to maintain focus and a sense of purpose in the face of a chaotic daily life of constant disruptions – not to mention sometimes dire news regarding denied appeals – are an awe-inspiring testament to the human spirit.

Each class usually has just under 20 students. I first provide some context and background; then, we closely analyze prepared readings together in seminar-type discussions. Every meeting is very much a two-way street, mutually challenging and enriching. The students in their reactions to the material raise in acute terms the question of why we care about any works of art, literature, or history; how and why they speak to us across time and space; how widely their reception varies, and how important it is for these different receptions to be voiced and heard. Haywood Gandy’s final paper (written in August 2015) offers an example of how students’ lived experiences and insights inform past reflections with their own perspectives, as they take ancient conversations in new directions and blend ancient voices with their own:

Cicero said, “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is always to remain a child.” I wonder, are we a fully grown society, in that we know what happened in our past? The government of the few has been tried and failed not only in ancient Athens but in our own recent history. What was an entire society that was built on and by slave labor? Was this democracy? We have an entire history to examine and learn from … If we decide to grow up in the way Cicero suggests and learn from our past, we can be greater than we imagine.

In the case of Greek tragedy, the students closely analyze the texts as in any other classroom: the poetry, context, political significance, and so on. Yet at any given time, we are doing much more than “just” literary criticism or historical analysis. Their mode of engaging the works is raw and direct. This is neither sheerly an intellectual exercise for its own sake, nor a detached analysis of ancient poetry as art or testimony of a distant past. It is never just a play or a plotline that we are discussing; these myths are often deeply reminiscent of these men’s lives: their own, their peers’, and their families’.⁸

What makes the ancient myths especially appealing, according to the students, is the ambiguity of their heroic figures. Greek plays portray humanity in all of its manifestations. In them, we see human life in all its chaos. The characters present a window for looking at and exploring what it means to be human that is particularly rich because it is deeply nuanced and multi-faceted. The plays open up questions about the potential in each of us for a wide range of decisions and outcomes, and the many forces at work both within and without us that lead to these outcomes. Those who one moment excel, and channel that excellence into glorious achievements, can in the next unwittingly destroy their loved ones, or themselves. They are flawed human beings whose actions are provoked by a wide range of factors (including the gods), who hesitate, doubt, destroy and regret, and are relatable in their fallibility and vulnerability. We return to Heracles (Euripides’) multiple times over the semester: the very same man who performs the 12 Labors, destroys monsters, and saves so many also annihilates his whole family while possessed by the vengeful goddess Hera. What of that possession – what are we to make of those moments in which the ancient Greeks tell us that such and such a hero or heroine committed something while a god impassioned them or struck them with madness? How do we disentangle circumstances from the important notions of individual agency and responsibility? Theseus’ words to Heracles to stop him from committing suicide after he kills his wife and children resonate deeply: what of the hero’s many other deeds? Should a man be defined by what he does in one moment, or what he does over a lifetime?

At the close of term, I give my students the option of recommending readings to enrich future iterations of the syllabus with comparative materials. I also put the question to them: did they care about our texts, and why? Many respond that the Classics are a crucial example of the Humanities’ ability to “give us back our Humanity.”⁹ This was the expression used by reentering citizen Marquis McCray, who was incarcerated for 27 years, and who has been (and continues to be) one of my main interlocutors and partners for the ongoing series of public-facing events I have been moderating with support from the Whiting Foundation.¹⁰ McCray states,

“Greek literature does not establish hierarchies and it doesn’t moralize everything; it just announces what is. It describes the human heart and the human condition as they are.” He adds, “Classical writings are a part of Humanity’s ongoing dialogue. A conversation which encompasses all; the good, the bad, and the ugly to be found in the human condition. These stories, albeit entertaining, also inspire and inform. More than this, they nourish, nurture, and encourage … We find within the classical texts not-so-civil or virtuous behaviors demonstrated by the same characters in whom we found inspiration: the Glory-bound Achilles reduced to what is tantamount to the bully that we despise; the sagacious Odysseus so guilefully duplicitous and deceptive that his ethics and morality fall into question. What shock confronts the reader, when it is discovered that the kind, supportive Theseus was responsible for what can only be defined as crimes against humanity? And who does not cringe as they witness the horror that is our mighty Heracles indiscriminately slaughtering women and children? What manner of men are these? In a word, ‘common!’ Dual in nature, these men are arch-typical of humanity’s perfectly imperfect.”

When Heracles wants to take his own life, his faithful friend Theseus helps him regain a sense of worth, recalling his past and appealing to his male pride. In a last-ditch attempt to help him find the courage to persist, he resorts to a misogynistic slur, calling him “womanish.” “Ah, my favorite passage,” I jokingly tell my students. “Don’t lack courage = ‘don’t be womanish’.” We laugh. Some are indignant. Most know female courage of Heraclean proportions first-hand. In countless essays and in class, they mention the crucial role that “strong” women play in their lives: mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, partners – women on whose courage, persistence, steadfastness and reliability they can count. In the spring of 2019, I brought some Rutgers students from my Hero in Ancient Greece and Rome class to a visit with EJSP’s Lifers Group. These so-called “tours” are offered by the prison to educate criminal justice majors (and others) about prison life. Someone asked the Lifers: what is a hero? In a typical undergraduate classroom, when we discuss the likes of Achilles or Odysseus, these larger-than-life characters’ strength and other superhuman qualities invariably come up. The Lifers Group had a different answer: heroes, they said, are those who endure and support others by enduring. Every single man went on...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• Part I: Old texts, new classrooms
• Part II: Beyond the classroom
• Part III: Critical pedagogy and the academy
• Index