Chair(s)

Lily Patchett

Texts

Tommie Shelby, The Idea of Prison Abolition (2022), Chapter 4

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes From a Dead House (1862)

This session will contrast current critiques of the carceral system with nineteenth-century approaches to imprisonment. Participants will begin with Shelby’s discussion of the now-widespread critique of the ‘prison-industrial complex.’ Lily Patchett (Philosophy and Italian Studies) will then lead a discussion on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s semi-autobiographical novel Notes from a Dead House (1862) which portrays the lives of convicts in a Serbian prison camp. The novel is generally considered to be a fictional depiction of Dostoevsky’s own imprisonment in a forced labour camp from 1849 to 1854. 

Readings will be sent to participants upon registration.