Teaching Ethics and Politics in Carceral Spaces

• In Event: Carceral Innovation at the Intersection of HBCU and Higher Education in Prison

Abstract

Theological education in correctional facilities has expanded since the development of the program. Howard University School of Divinity (HUSD) offers courses in correctional facilities but two distinctives: (1) as a nonsectarian university divinity school, its focus has a broader mission than professional education and (2) as a historically Black institution, its commitment to cultural competency is embedded in its approach to providing coursework. First, we offer the course “Ethics and Politics” using a theological methodology drawn from three prominent theologians of the 20th Century, all with carceral experience: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jurgen Moltmann, and Martin Luther King, Jr. This approach involves what Moltmann calls “experience seeking theology” and “faith seeking understanding”. It begins with helping students articulate their carceral experience in theo-philosophical terms such as philosophical anthropology and moral agency. Then, it moves to apply these lenses to politics and culture, affirming the continuum between personal narrative and public issue. Second, by providing instruction from a professor with carceral experience, HUSD offers participants the opportunity to envision a productive future through identification with the professor’s narrative, and the university’s history. This presentation provides insight into the course curriculum that provided multiple student and faculty transformations through lived experience.

Author

• Harold Dean Trulear, Howard University