Shakespeare Saved My Life, Picturing Migrants
Shakespeare Saved My Life Guests: Laura Bates, PhD, Author of “Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard,” Professor of English at Indiana State University; Rex Hammond, Former Student of Laura Bates As prison populations in the US have grown over the last few decades, states have looked for ways to help inmates reform during incarceration and be less likely to re-offend once they’re released. Researchers say programs that offer a chance for education in prison are particularly helpful in that regard. But when Indiana State University English professor Laura Bates proposed teaching Shakespeare to the most serious offenders in a maximum security prison, officials didn’t think she’d have much luck. Particularly since her plan was to teach inmates being held in solitary confinement. They couldn’t sit face to face in a class room. They weren’t even allowed to have hardback books in their cells. What good could an English professor and the Bard possibly do in that setting? Picturing Migrants and Refugees Guest: James Swensen, PhD, Assistant Professor of Art History at BYU, Author of “Picturing Migrants: The Grapes of Wrath and New Deal Documentary Photography” When we think today about what poverty looks like in America, it’s the 80-year-old images taken by Dorothea Lange and her fellow New Deal photographers that still come to mind. The furrowed brow of a Migrant Mother, or the vacant stare of a barefoot child in a tattered dress. You can’t help but recognize the similarities to the photos of hungry women and children in refugee camps in Greece, Turkey and Jordan.