CLASSES
Each year PNAP offers 13-15 non-credit college-level courses in subjects ranging from printmaking and criminology to poetry and women’s studies. Faculty are independent artists and Chicago university professors. A committee identifies new faculty and courses based on student interest and a desire to offer classes in a wide range of subjects taught by faculty that are representative of our student population. Our commitment to non-credit classes has been supported and articulated by our students in prison, as access to general education and art has been a critical gateway to higher education. Along with classes, PNAP hosts guest lectures where speakers discuss their work as writers, artists, and activists together with a group of incarcerated men in the Stateville auditorium.
Current Courses
Drawing Family Portraits, Community History, and Freedom Dreams
Faculty: Aaron Hughes
TA: Darrell Fair
This course focuses on developing students’ technical drawing skills while exploring the formal and conceptual construction of portraiture, historical painting, community murals, political posters, and public monuments. Class exercises on line quality, mark making, positive and negative space, light and dark value, perspective, composition, visual mapping, and anatomy will develop students’ technical skills while class readings and discussions will deepen students’ theoretical framework and creative visions. Through individual critiques and group discussions students will develop an understanding of how drawing can shift from the personal to political and back again, offer a space for personal reflection, and help visualize alternative futures. The class will conclude with the development of a series of portraits and drawings that highlight personal histories, address social issues, and express “freedom dreams.”
Writing Our Lives: The Art of Memoir and Personal Essay
Faculty: William Ayers and Rachel DeWoskin
TA: Darnell Lane
We will be concerned in this class with writing personal essays; we will explore fundamental issues in essay writing–creating a credible narrator; describing a scene in sufficient detail; becoming a story-teller; fighting the impulse to do therapy on the page; knowing when to “show, don’t tell.” We will focus on doing autobiographical research, which is, in the first place, an act of intelligence and creativity. We will draw on judgment, experience, instinct, and deeper study. We will read some solid examples of other people’s efforts at “writing their lives;” and we will quickly turn this into a writer’s workshop. The work will then become a critical examination of class members’ writings. We will share parts of our original writing with class-mates which will allow us to dig more deeply into the writing process itself.
Latinx Art, Latinx History
Faculty: Christina Gómez, Jason LaFountain, Helen Sanchez-Cortes
TA: Juan Luna
This class examines the rich and varied contributions of Latinx artists in the United States through the lens of Latinx history, from the early twentieth century to the present. The course explores various historical moments using Latinx artists and art-making as a matrix to further our understanding of belonging and the presence of Latinx identity in the United States. Focusing on the cultural production of Latinx people in the diaspora, we read essays from the social sciences and humanities, giving the course a strong interdisciplinary component. The weekly readings and art exercises follow a thematic structure driven by critical issues specific to Latinx art and history. We emphasize themes pertaining to the immigrant experience, including migration, identity formation, visibility, social movements, marginalization, and isolation. Race, gender, colorism, economic status, and sexuality are topics threaded throughout the course. The course addresses the diversity within the Latinx community, including Mexican-Americans, Central Americans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Cubans, as well as newer arrivals. The course will culminate in the completion of a collective art project, later to be realized in Little Village, incorporating themes discussed throughout the term.
The Personal is Political: A Poetry Workshop
Faculty: Meredith Nnoka
TA: Reginald BoClair
The Second Wave of the feminist movement introduced us to the phrase “The personal is political” in the late 1960s. But in poetry, the link between the personal and the political has long been at the center of how many poets view their own work. In this course, we will explore poetry that connects poets’ personal experiences to broader political, national, or societal themes. Each week will present a different angle on poetry that bridges the personal and the political, and will require students to complete weekly readings of poetry and prose, to write one poem a week, and to participate in weekly writing workshops, leading to a class anthology and an in-class poetry reading.
Introduction to Observational Astronomy
Faculty: Amanda Farah
TA: Daniel Perkins
Through lecture-style instruction and group problem solving, mostly in the form of weekly homework, this course gives a broad understanding of concepts in astronomy. We will start the course by learning about the objects in the universe which we can see with our own eyes: stars, galaxies, planets, moons, asteroids, and nebulae. We will then explore how we observe these objects and what we learn from those observations. We will discuss the history of the universe, including its invisible components: the Big Bang, dark matter, dark energy, and the expansion of the universe today. We will end with a few lectures on gravity and black holes.
Legal Writing 101
Faculty: Megan Porter and Steve Weil
TA: Joseph Dole
Legal Writing 101 introduces students to the fundamentals of legal research, writing, and analysis. Students will learn how to write clear, concise, accurate, and structured work that communicates their ideas to different audiences. Each week, students will review real examples of legal writing, participate in writing exercises, and pair-and-share their work with their classmates. Students will learn how to state their claim, choose appropriate priorities to support their claims, and persuasively advocate for their point of view. Writing is improved through collaboration. Students should be prepared to work as a team to improve their writing skills by reading and critiquing one another’s writing. By the end of the semester, students will produce a piece of legal writing that showcases their growth.
UWW Study Hall
Faculty: Tim Barnett, Jason LaFountain, Gabrielle Christiansen, Brockelley Grenn, Alan Giuliani
UWW Study Hall provides a space for current degree students to get together once a week outside of class, for support from the PNAP Higher Education Coordinator. There will be time for filling out degree paperwork, discussion of courses, workshopping writing, tutoring (e.g. math), planning for future semesters, etc. The Study Hall is also a space for UWW graduates to mentor the current students.
Justice, Politics, and Culture Think Tank
Faculty: Melissa Lorraine and Alice Kim
The Think Tank is composed of incarcerated scholars and cultural workers and is co-facilitated by Alice Kim and Timmy Châu. Through in-depth research, policy analysis, and advocacy, alongside creative cultural projects, we work to transform the material and ideological conditions created by carceral logics. We seek to make key interventions and offer critical insights to the broader movement to end mass-incarceration from within one of the most brutal geographies of the prison-industrial-complex. Abolition is our horizon.
Past Courses
2022-23 Academic Year
Poetry for Our Times
Faculty: Meredith Nnoka
Comics for Now
Faculty: Damon Locks
Narrating Social Change
Faculty: Cathy Cohen and Alice Kim
Sciences Through the Ages
Faculty: Shireen Hamza
Black Lives in Historic Context
Faculty: Johari Jabir
English: Advanced Composition
Faculty: Tim Barnett
UWW Study Hall
Faculty: Jason LaFountain, Tim Barnett, Gabrielle Christiansen, and Alan Giuliani
Justice, Politics, and Culture Think Tank
Faculty: Melissa Lorraine, Alice Kim, and Timmy Châu
2021-22 Academic Year
Art Workshop
Faculty: William Estrada
Abondans: Worldbuilding and Afrofuturism
Faculty: Indigo Wright and Timmy Châu
Reading and Writing Short Poems
Faculty: Meredith Nnoka
Alternative Justice Systems: A Comparative Exploration for Liberation
Faculty: Marina Bell and Clinton Nichols
Practicing Public Health: Healing Communities, Healing Selves
Faculty: Evan Lyon and Sam Chen
The Evolution of Hip-Hop
Faculty: LaTasha DeHaan
Portrait as Mosaic: A Reading and Writing Intensive Seminar
Faculty: Audrey Petty, Jill Petty, and Ben Austen
Printmaking: Portraits of Change
Faculty: William Estrada and Hanna Gibson
Youth and Social Movements
Faculty: David Stovall and Emily Pierce
Shaped by Spaces: Human Relationships with Built and Natural Environments
Faculty: Tess Landon
Modern Mathematics
Faculty: Alan Giuliani
Correspondence on Current Biology Topics
Faculty: Beth Reinke and Aaron Schirmer
Tracing the History of Japanese-American Incarceration During World War II
Faculty: Fred Sasaki and Cean Gamalinda
Contemporary Feminists Engagements
Faculty: Beth Richie, Erica Meiners, and Anna Martine-Whitehead
Two Centuries of Black Poetry: A Generative and Analytical Poetry Course
Faculty: Tara Betts
Drawing: Observation and Invention
Faculty: Claire Pentecost
UWW Study Hall
Faculty: Jason LaFountain
Math Tutorial
Faculty: Nick Moreno
Justice, Politics, and Culture Think Tank
Faculty: Alice Kim, Durrell Washington, Timmy Châu and Noelle Petrowski
2020-21 Academic Year
Justice, Politics, and Culture Think Tank
Faculty: Alice Kim, Durrell Washington, and Noelle Petrowski
Math Tutorial
Faculty: Desmond Taylor
Making Space: Emancipatory Design
Faculty: Anna Martine Whitehead, Andres Hernandez, and Amanda Williams
Art: Justice Murals
Faculty: Anna Martine Whitehead, Sarah Ross, Damon Locks, and Aaron Hughes
Towards a People’s Bill of Rights: Rethinking Criminal Justice
Faculty: Clinton Nichols
Introduction to Latinx Studies
Faculty: Christina Gómez
A Beloved Community: Healing, Justice, and the Urgency of Mindfulness
Faculty: Johari Jabir
James Baldwin and Black Political Thought
Faculty: Martha Biondi
Race, Class, and Gender Dimensions of Criminalization and Justice
Faculty: Julian Thompson
Research for Justice
Faculty: Lisa Yun Lee and Adam Bush
Poetry: The Lyric Essay
Faculty: Audrey Petty
Writing Our Lives: The Art of Memoir and Personal Essay
Faculty: William Ayers
Violence in Society
Faculty: Beth Richie
Introduction to Visual Criminology
Faculty: Luke Fidler and Jason LaFountain
Economy, Society, and Public Policy
Faculty: Damon Jones
2019-20 Academic Year
African Americans and the Civil War
Faculty: Johari Jabir
Envisioning Criminal Justice Reforms
Faculty: Clinton Nichols
Art: Anthems
Faculty: Sarah Ross, Anna Martine Whitehead, Aaron Hughes, and Damon Locks
Writing Poetry
Faculty: Tara Betts
Writing the Brief Biography and Short Learning Statements
Faculty: Tara Betts
Critical Ethnic Studies and Contemporary Art Practice
Faculty: Patricia Nguyen and Casey Goonan
At Home in the World: Telling Our Stories of Public Housing
Faculty: Lisa Yun Lee and Ben Auste
Critical Writing and Research
Faculty: Tim Barnett, Martha Biondi, Erica Meiners, and Beth Richie
Draw What You See/Draw What You Dream
Faculty: Aaron Hughes
Our Dances, Our Freedom
Faculty: Anna Martine Whitehead
2018-19 Academic Year
Introduction to Writing
Faculty: Simone Waller
Digging Deeper: Poetry Informed by Contingent Citizenship and Being Human
Faculty: Tara Betts
Emancipation and Abolition in Historical Perspective
Faculty: Kai Parker
Afrofuturism: Science Fiction as Social Commentary and Alternative Visions of Tomorrow
Faculty: Clinton Nichols
UWW Capstone Experience Course
Faculty: Timothy Barnett and Erica Meiners
Race and Politics
Faculty: Cathy Cohen
Make Your Mark & Fly Your Flag
Faculty: Aaron Hughes
From Civil Rights to #Black Lives Matter: Politics, Society and Protest Since the 1960s
Faculty: Martha Biondi
Movement / Movement: Dance and Liberation
Faculty: Anna Martine Whitehead
Poetry About My Rights: Writing Poems Informed by Contingent Citizenship
Faculty: Tara Betts
Art and Empire in the Ancient World
Faculty: Luke Fidler
The Social Value of Latinas/os/xs
Faculty: Michael De Anda Muñiz
Manifesta for the Future
Faculty: Claire Pentecost
2017-18 Academic Year
Introduction to Environmental Justice
Faculty: Antonio Reyes López
Writing Workshop: Creating Character
Faculty: Tess Landon
Printmaking: Developing a Collaborative Portfolio
Faculty: William Estrada
Art and Animation
Faculty: Damon Locks and Sarah Ross
Mapping the Self in Community
Faculty: Jill Petty, Audrey Petty, and Miriam Petty
American Public Schools
Faculty: Eve Ewing and David Stovall
Justice and Politics in Shakespeare’s Plays
Faculty: Wendy Wall
Black Women in History, Politics, and The Law
Faculty: Beth Richie, Barbara Ransby, and Cathy Cohen
Critical Education: Power, Knowledge, and Change
Faculty: Tim Barnett and Erica Meiners
Introduction to Criminology
Faculty: Clinton Nichols
A Survey of Black Writers
Faculty: Tara Betts
Writing: Education from the Public to the Personal
Faculty: Tess Landon
Political Theory: The Meaning and Limits of Rights
Faculty: Lucy Cane
Philosophy: Freedom and Its Limits
Faculty: David Egan
Philosophy: Philosophy of Punishment
Faculty: Jessica Bird
2016-17 Academic Year
American Art: A People’s History
Faculty: Luke Fidler and Jason LaFountain
Introduction to Latina/o Studies
Faculty: Michael De Anda Muñiz
Staging Time: Real Stories, Real Theater
Faculty: David Feiner and Benjamin Serrano
African American Studies 101
Faculty: Kai Parker
Passing Time: (In)significant Moments
Faculty: Andres Hernandez
Literature: The Journey
Faculty: Audrey Petty
History: From Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter
Faculty: Martha Biondi
Art: From Drawing the Personal to Printing the Public
Faculty: Aaron Hughes
Writing: Writing Through a Wall
Faculty: Alice Kim
Performance: Dance and Movement-Building
Faculty: Anna Martine Whitehead
2015-16 Academic Year
Literature: Detective Fiction
Faculty: Tim Barnett
Abstracting Nature
Faculty: William Estrada
Political Science: The Meaning and Limits of Rights
Faculty: Anna Terweil and Lucy Cane
The Artistic Imagination
Faculty: Jason LaFountain
Art: Drawing on Community
Faculty: Marvin Tate
Religion and the Black Freedom Struggle
Faculty: Kai Parker
Black Women and the Justice System
Faculty: Beth Richie
Words Free: An Exploration of Poetry & Poetics
Faculty: Lasana Kazembe
African American History, 1619-1900
Faculty: Kai Parker
Freedom Dreams
Faculty: Alice Kim
Core Writing Skills
Faculty: Nancy Traver
Art and Science Fiction: Documenting the Future
Faculty: Damon Locks
2014-15 Academic Year
Reading and Writing Our Lives
Faculty: Tim Barnett
Political Theory: Theory and Event
Faculty: Lucy Cane
The Art and Craft of Memoir: Object Lessons
Faculty: Audrey Petty
Black Women and the Criminal Justice System
Faculty: Beth Richie
Introduction to Latino and Latin American Studies
Faculty: Christina Gómez
Portraiture and Installation
Faculty: Sarah Ross
Writing Workshop
Faculty: Amy Partridge and Erica Meiners
Poetry Series: Writing and a Healing
Faculty: Marvin Tate
Animals: Myth and Reality
Faculty: Claire Pentecost
The Artist in Representation
Faculty: Damon Locks
Introduction to Political Theory in the American Context
Faculty: Lucy Cane and Anna Terwiel
African American History, 1865-Present
Faculty: Darryl Heller
2013-14 Academic Year
Personal Narratives in History
Faculty: Amy Partridge
Art & Advocacy, History & Practice
Faculty: Tess Landon
Art: (Re)creation / Time
Faculty: Damon Locks, Sarah Ross, and Fereshteh Toosi
The Fiction and Prose of Richard Wright
Faculty: Natasha Barnes
Social Change Histories
Faculty: Erica Meiners and Jill Petty
Poetry: Dear Reader
Faculty: Fred Sasaki, Lindsay Garbutt, Ydalmi Noriega, Ashley Sheehan, James Sitar, Mairead Case, and Nuria Sheehan
Humanities: Social Change Histories
Faculty: Ben Almassi and Nick Smaligo
Drawing from Observation
Faculty: Ryan Griffis
Expository Writing Basics
Faculty: Jill Petty
Poor People’s Movements in the 2000s, 1960s & 1930s
Faculty: Amy Partridge
2012-13 Academic Year
Gendered Perspectives
Faculty: Erica Meiners
Unexpected Art, Unexpected Artists
Faculty: Tess Landon
Mural and Painting Workshop
Faculty: Gabriel Villa
The Letter
Faculty: Claire Pentecost
Creative Writing: Political Poetry
Faculty: Daniela Olszewska
Creative Writing: Coming of Age
Faculty: Jill Petty
Poetry
Faculty: Anthony Madrid, Nadya Pittendrigh, Fred Sasaki, and Tess Landon
Visual Stories
Faculty: Sarah Ross