http://hdl.handle.net/2451/75625 Fri, 21 Aug 2026 04:36:03 GMT 2026-08-21T04:36:03Z http://hdl.handle.net/2451/76021 Title: Introduction to Special Issue: Abolitionist Praxis and Education Across Prison Walls Authors: Brown, Dylan; Noss, Kaitlin; Javdani, Shabnam Abstract: This issue of Voices in Urban Education explores the complex and often contradictory terrain of abolitionist practice within and beyond college-in-prison programs. To do so, we draw on the foundational belief that education can be a practice of freedom. Across the contributions and artwork presented in this issue, we invite readers to examine and witness how teaching and learning across prison walls has historically been and continues to be a site of political struggle, solidarity, and collective transformation. We also invite readers to consider urgent questions that arise as education institutions expand their presence within prisons, including those that ask: can education behind bars support liberatory aims, or does it risk reinforcing the prison-industrial complex? And if so, how do we make this liberatory function intentional and hold ourselves as educators accountable to the unintended negative consequences that may arise from our well-meaning endeavors? Through reflections, case studies, and dialogues, contributors to this issue grapple with these tensions, highlighting both the possibilities and limits of working toward abolition from within carceral systems. From campus organizing against policing to building a bridge for incarcerated students onto college campuses, the issue surfaces abolition as both a political commitment and an ongoing pedagogical practice. Centering the voices of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students, educators, and organizers, this issue insists on education as a radical act of presence, imagination, and solidarity—even, and especially, in carceral spaces. The editors would like to express their deep appreciation to all of the contributors to this special issue, the entire NYU Prison Education Program team, the VUE editor in chief Maria Rosa Brea, Toby Wu, and especially to Maddie Coury for her invaluable editorial assistance. Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2451/76021 2025-09-03T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2451/76020 Title: Can Prison Education be Abolitionist? Reflections from the Circle of Solidarity Authors: Golub, Mar Abstract: University-sponsored prison education programs offer valuable resources to populations typically denied educational access and opportunity. They also extend the university’s resources and legitimacy to the carceral system within which they necessarily operate. This essay takes up the potential contradiction between prison education and prison abolition by reflecting on my experience developing a correspondence-based inside-outside program independent from official channels: the Circle of Solidarity Study Group. Through collaborative cross-wall abolitionist study, the Circle of Solidarity seeks to connect prison education with individuals and organizations committed to the struggle for a society that does not use surveillance, policing, and human caging to address social problems and interpersonal harm. Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2451/76020 2025-09-03T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2451/76016 Title: Reflections on Creative Writing Inside Authors: Paty, Allyson; Cornelius, Karejah; Fairweather, Ramone Abstract: This conversation between teacher and students reflects on their experiences in a class called Creative Writing and Publication, which Allyson Paty has taught for nearly a decade inside the Wallkill Correctional Facility. Throughout the course, students develop their own poetry and prose, workshop the writing of their peers, and work together to design a final publication of their work in an annual print journal. Their discussion includes students’ reflections on finding their voice through writing, seeing their work in print and sharing it with others, and the challenges of censorship in the prison. It concludes with selected poetry and prose from six student contributors who have had their work published by New York University’s Prison Education Program and Gallatin School of Individualized Study over the past several years. Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2451/76016 2025-09-03T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2451/76018 Title: We Used to Think, But Now We Know: Abolitionist Pedagogy Authors: Hammer, Zoe Abstract: This article reprints a lightly edited paper by Zoe Hammer, which she presented as part of a panel of scholar-activists and long-time prison abolitionists at the American Studies Association in November 2014. In a brief introduction to the paper, Hammer reflects on how, in 2014, the framing of torture in prison by both prison officials and prison reformers obscured the systemic violence of prison under the guise of what James Kilgore calls “carceral humanism,” thus emphasizing the importance of the analysis and framing as abolitionists. The article contextualizes this 2014 moment of reformist versus abolitionist frameworks, particularly through the author’s lens of many years of teaching college courses about the prison industrial complex and abolition. Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2451/76018 2025-09-03T00:00:00Z