'The Prison and the American Imagination,' by Caleb Smith, appeared from Yale University Press in 2009. The book examines the history of the U.S. prison system and its imaginative life in nineteenth- and twentieth-century culture. This site is a forum for conversation about the book and the questions it raises.
What is the history of incarceration in America? What roles do prisons and prisoners play in our political life and in our culture? How have artists and writers, both inside prisons and in the world at large, invited us to imagine the institutions of captivity? Visitors to this site might be interested in the sprawling prison system of the twenty-first century, including the scandals of American war prisons overseas. They may also wish to explore the long, sometimes tortured history of jails, penitentiaries, plantations, and other dark places that have haunted the new world, with its promise of liberty and justice for all.
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