Fall 2024 Colloquium Series

The first Fall 24 Colloquium speaker is Dr. Rachel Ellis, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland. The title and abstract are included below:

In This Place Called Prison: Women's Religious Life in the Shadow of Punishment

Rachel Ellis is an Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland. Using qualitative methods--especially ethnographic observation and interviews--her research focuses on women's experiences of punishment in the U.S. She will present a lecture on her recent book, In This Place Called Prison (University of California Press, 2023). Based on one year of ethnographic fieldwork conducted inside a U.S. state women's prison, the book offers an account of religious life within an institution designed to punish. Through the stories of hundreds of incarcerated women, staff, and volunteers, In This Place Called Prison documents how women draw on religion to navigate lived experiences of carceral control. Examining how religion collides and colludes with the state in an enduring tension between freedom and constraint, this book speaks to the quest for dignity and light against the backdrop of mass incarceration, state surveillance, and American inequality.