Join Tang Curator-at-Large Isolde Brielmaier on Friday, October 6, at 6:30 pm, as she moderates a discussion with Harvard historian Elizabeth Hinton, artist Duron Jackson, and activist Johnny Perez on the subject of mass incarceration, ideas of mobility and immobility (social, economic, political), and the prison industrial complex.

The discussion will take into account the recent and current political and social climate in the U.S. Particular attention will be given to how these issues are made visible in today’s culture as well as the social and political implications of these images.

This event is free and open to the public.

About the Speakers

Elizabeth Hinton, Assistant Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, focuses her research on the persistence of poverty and racial inequality in the twenty-century United States. Her new book, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America, was published in 2016.

Multi-disciplinary artist Duron Jackson explores the social inter-relationships of “Blackness” within the broader context of contemporary culture. Duron’s works focus on social and political histories in relation to mass incarceration, constructions of criminality, and state surveillance in the United States.

Johnny Perez is the Safe Reentry Advocate at the Urban Justice Center Mental Health Project (MHP), a nonprofit law firm providing pro bono legal services to under-served population in NYC. Specifically, he works directly with people with mental illness and histories of incarceration. Johnny is a member of Just Leadership USA’s 2017 Leading with Conviction Program and is now in the process completing his first nonfiction book: Uncuffed: Reflections on Criminal Justice After 13 Years of Incarceration.

About the Accelerator Series

The Accelerator Series is the Tang Teaching Museum’s dynamic conversation series on big ideas and big issues that seeks to find new entry points into discussions that veer from traditional paths. As an open and inclusive public forum for dialogue, exchange and questioning, the Accelerator Series ignites a collective sense of intellectual curiosity and fosters thoughtful engagement with a deeper understanding of compelling issues that have the potential to spark radical transformations.

The series features key cultural influencers from the arts and culture sector as well as academia, entertainment, government, journalism, media, politics and beyond, who present new perspectives and disrupt the status quo by encouraging a “getting comfortable with discomfort” attitude in order to think and work through big ideas to drive change.

The Accelerator Series is supported by Accelerate: Access and Inclusion at the Tang Teaching Museum, a project of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and by a generous gift from Michele Dunkerley ‘80.

About the Exhibition

States of Incarceration is organized for the Tang Teaching Museum by Rachel Seligman, Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs, Tang Teaching Museum, and Eric Morser, Associate Professor of History, Skidmore College with Skidmore College students from the course “Adventures in Public History: The Prison Project.” The exhibition is supported by National Endowment for the Humanities, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and at Skidmore College by Project VIS, the John B. Moore Documentary Studies Collaborative, and the Skidmore College History Department. For a complete list of public programs, visit the States of Incarceration exhibition page.