Russian literature to inmates

[Naomi Olson]

Dear SEELANGers,

Together with community partners, graduate students in the Slavic
Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been involved in
outreach projects to make the study of Russian literature, culture, and
language accessible to both high school students and prison inmates.

UW Slavic grads have been leading courses at Oakhill Correctional
Institution (a minimum security men’s prison in Oregon, Wisconsin) since
2009. We have partnered with UW graduate students from several different
fields in the Humanities, and currently offer five courses held weekly at
the prison: Poetry Composition, Memoir and Fiction Writing,
African-American Literature, Russian Literature, and World Literature. Most
of us would agree that reading and discussing Russian literature creates a
space for our participants to interact on a human level (something that is
markedly absent from the mundane routine of prison life), but it would be
difficult to make specific claims about Russian literature. As the founder
of the Russian literature course at Oakhill prison, I was first inspired by
a This American Life radio program about the study, rehearsal, and
production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in a maximum-security prison (find it
here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/218/act-v ). I
was confident that Pushkin’s works could resonate just as well as
Shakespeare’s, and indeed, they did not disappoint. Great works of art, no
matter where they come from, give meaning to all of our lives.

 I think most of us would agree that expanded offerings of Russian
literature courses throughout high schools in the United States would be a
good thing. For many of the individuals who end up in the prison system,
however, high school is a negative and often violent place. Educational
programming in prison has been shown to reduce recidivism, but, as Alina’s
tongue-in-cheek suggestion pointed out, young people need access,
opportunity, and education in the formative periods of their lives.

 To learn more about our efforts to expand the study of Russian culture to
traditionally under-represented groups at the precollege level, please see
our page on the Pushkin Summer Institute:
http://slavic.lss.wisc.edu/new_web/?q=node/115

 To learn more about our partners and our educational programming at the
prison, see the Writers In Prisons project:
http://www.writersinprisonsproject.org/

 For any questions about the humanities educational programming at Oakhill,
please contact me at naomi.j.olson at gmail.com. For specific questions about
the Russian literature class, please contact Zachary Rewinski at
zachary.rewinski at gmail.com.


All the best,

Naomi Olson

Oakhill Prison Educational Programming Coordinator

Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures

University of Wisconsin-Madison

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