The podcast ‘Humanity Unlocked’ explores the impact of the humanities in prison. • Wisconsin Examiner

“Something happened that was bigger than anything that one of us or a group of us was doing. It was just too big to just be about poetry. It was a restored voice,” said Joshua Wells, a formerly incarcerated person, on the Wisconsin Humanities podcast series “Humanity Unlocked.”

Now in its second season, the podcast offers listeners the stories of those who have experienced the prison system and engaged in the humanities—poetry, writing, art, and college—and discover not only ways to express themselves, but also a identity that is bigger than their criminal record.

The goal of the series is to “focus on amplifying the human stories of incarceration and lived experiences of individuals impacted by the justice system.” A common thread throughout the series is that the humanities matter, especially in some of the darkest places where one’s humanity seems most diminished.

The podcasts are hosted by Adam Carr, a Milwaukee storyteller, filmmaker, radio producer and historian, who sets the story and puts interviewees’ comments into a larger context. Co-host Dasha Kelly Hamilton is a writer, performance artist and creative change agent and Poet Laureate of Wisconsin 2021-22.

In episode 5, “Bead by Bead,” student James Price talks about gaining discipline through the practice of Native American beading at the Stanley Correctional Institute, a discipline he uses during his studies at university.

Commenting on the story, Hamilton said that, contrary to reductive stereotypes, people who are imprisoned are “philosophers.” There are filmmakers. There are all kinds of people in those buildings (prisons), just as there are all kinds of people walking around freely, so finding a way to feed and fuel those segments of the people in those places is essential.

The idea for the podcasts came from Hamilton’s work in a poetry exchange with people inside and outside prison, and producer Jen Rubin’s involvement with the University of Wisconsin’s Odyssey Beyond Bars Project, where he taught storytelling workshops in prisons .

“I think things like art, poetry, storytelling and history are partly ways that we can all help find meaning in our lives,” Rubin says. “I think Rob (Dr. Robert S. Smith, director of the Center for Urban Research, Teaching & Outreach, Marquette University) from episode five says it really well: ‘If somewhere we need help finding meaning in our life, it is in mass incarceration. ”

Over two years, interviews were conducted with residents inside and outside the prison system and with those who engaged them in poetry and writing courses, publishing newspapers and newsletters, providing space for art exhibitions, and teaching college classes.

Very little time is spent on why the individuals are or were in prison. Most of the podcast talks about their involvement in the humanities. Robert Taliaferro, most notably seen in Episode 3, “Three Convicts, Twenty Dollars and a Newspaper,” spent 38 years behind bars, but the podcast focuses on his path to becoming editor of America’s leading prison newspapers, The Prison Mirror.

Episodes

Episode 1: “Death-defying Feats” features excerpts from Hamilton’s poetry seminar at Racine Correctional Institution. She sets up the writing assignments and then we hear comments from the residents and excerpts from their work.

Episode 2: “A Mic and Five Minutes” features the Wisconsin Odyssey Beyond Bars project at Oakhill Correctional Facility, where incarcerated students take an English 100 story and then tell their stories in their own voices in a five-minute presentation.

Episode 3: “Three Convicts, Twenty Dollars and a Newspaper” tells the history of an 1880s prison newspaper founded by members of the Jessie James Gang, and Taliaferro’s experience becoming an award-winning writer, as well as Shannon Ross, who started a newsletter that reaches 30,000 people, including those inside and outside of prison.

Episode 4: “Art Against the Odds” chronicles the art-making journey of residents who struggled to find both the resources and encouragement to make art in prison, and the 2023 “Art Against the Odds” show in Milwaukee with 250 works of those who are or were imprisoned.

Episode 5: “Bead by Bead” is a look at Marquette University’s Educational Preparedness Program (EPP), which integrates students enrolled on the Milwaukee campus with those incarcerated or still in the system to sit.

Episode 6, “It’s Not Just a Vote,” explores those who are denied the right to vote due to their criminal record. Convicted felons in Wisconsin cannot vote until they have completed their sentences, probation and parole. There are about 45,000 people in the state waiting to vote.

There’s also more information with each episode, including profiles and information about the criminal justice system.

The first five episodes explore how the humanities have affected the lives of people both inside and outside the system. The sixth explores how the legacy of incarceration continues to impact humanity by denying the right to vote.

“If your government tells you you don’t count, how are you supposed to feel like you belong in your community?” Rubin said.

Carr said the sixth episode grew out of the broader discussion about recognizing people’s humanity. “I don’t know that most people would associate this specifically with a humanities curriculum,” he said of the vote. In the broader conversation about how people survive the prison system and how they regain a sense of their own humanity when they get out, he said, “It made sense for the arc of the season.”

Within the podcasts

The first five episodes make clear why engaging with the humanities is more than just a feel-good exercise.

Peter Moreno, featured in Episode 2: “A Mic and Five Minutes,” is the director of Odyssey Beyond Bars and a lawyer and former law professor who touts the benefits of giving prisoners writing lessons to tell their stories.

“When people are given a platform to express themselves and convey their personal story from prison in a way that other people can hear and understand, it quickly humanizes things,” he said.

Mark Español recently served a nine-year prison sentence and spoke about the impact of writing a story from his life and giving a five-minute presentation as part of a class he took from Kevin Mullen, an assistant professor in Continuing Studies at UW-Madison and director of adult education for the UW-Odyssey Project, the larger campaign to bring higher education to low-income adult students.

“It made me feel human again,” Español said. “That class, that environment he created, made me feel human, allowing us as prisoners not only to be vulnerable, but also to get to know each other on a personal level.”

Students in Odyssey Beyond Bars can write on any topic. Español chose to write about a day in his life when, as a five-year-old, he walked into a room in his apartment where his sister was holding her shot boyfriend.

“You know, I’ve been in prison for almost ten years wondering where I went wrong, you know, how did I get here?” he said. “It all went back to that apartment. Things that I witnessed, that I was exposed to as a child, that I should never have been exposed to, and that story was once. It sucked that I had to experience that as a five-year-old.”

Presenting a story has a profound effect, Hamilton said.

“It changes the skills and the calculations,” she said, describing a way of calculating how to survive that is different from the skills involved in storytelling. Instead of staying in “survival mode,” “being able to process a story,” “turning that memory into a five-minute presentation that’s compelling to someone you don’t know and wasn’t there for that memory – it’s not trifle.”

Carr said people in the system are often reminded that the most important thing about them is their crime or “the biggest mistake you ever made and nothing else,” but engaging with the humanities is starting a new conversation opened.

Much of what is offered in prison under the umbrella of rehabilitation, Hamilton said, is based on the assumption that a resident has a “deficit” that is addressed with counseling, education or financial literacy. The humanities operate on a different assumption.

“It’s meeting people where they’re already full,” she said. “It gives people the opportunity to lean on that part that doesn’t exhaust them, that doesn’t diminish their humanity and their creativity.”

A moving moment in episode 4: “Art Against the Odds” comes when former inmate Sarah Demerath, who spent years in prison with her 14-year-old daughter, gets the chance to see her daughter’s reaction to Demerath’s art in a major gallery exhibition.

“When we got to the gallery, I had never seen her so proud of me,” Demerath said. “She’s an artist and she was just as excited as I was and she said, ‘That’s my mother,’ and she watched me do the interviews with the news and she was buzzing through the whole exhibit with a huge smile. Never in my life did I ever imagine that my art would hang in a gallery, let alone that my daughter and mother would be there with me to see it and it was beautiful.”

Listen to the podcast at wisconsinhumanities.org/podcast/.