Katheryn Doran is an associate professor and chair of the Philosophy Department at Hamilton College. She runs a prison book group, doing a bit to stand against the injustice of the US carceral system.
1. What civically engaged work do you do? What is your role?
I am the director of Hamilton College’s HOPE/Hamilton Oneida Prison Education faculty group, and the person in our small group of four (currently) who has been doing a prison book group for the longest—about 15 years. We work at a men’s medium-security prison about 30 minutes from the College.
Our book groups are not classes. We are volunteers, we get no course-release credit, the men get no college credit, and we do no grading or other evaluation of their work. We are all in it strictly for the rewards of reading and discussing the material together.
Many of the men who had lacked even a GED when they started in our groups—but soon got it—signed up immediately to be a part of the program when opportunities for college course credit finally made it to the prison. We can write letters of recommendation for them to those programs, and to their parole boards, too.
2. Give an example of a successful project.
My most successful runs have been during the summers when I’ve been able to go in for two-hour meetings every week. Two books that generated particularly successful discussions are Michael Sandel’s Justice, and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity. The Sandel was a bit tricky, since he starts each chapter with legally and ethically provocative cases which were almost too successful in getting the conversation going to work past them! The de Beauvoir was also an eye opener: it’s a very difficult text in many sections, and it calls upon, ideally, a good understanding of the history of western philosophy most of the men lacked. As we worked through it I would periodically ask whether they wanted to abandon it; they were adamant about covering the whole book. And we did. And they continued long after to incorporate its insights into discussions.
3. What do you think your book-group students gain from participating?
First, like most Americans these men have never been exposed to philosophy. They learn a lot about the historical materials, and the trade techniques of critical evaluation. Second, they get to subject their ideas to critical scrutiny—also, for most of them, a singular opportunity. Third, the meetings provide a very rare haven in which the members are able get to know each other intellectually without serious risk. And finally, some of the men develop a sense of themselves as agents with views worth developing and sharing, a kind of basic rational self-respect that they have never experienced before.
4. What does the project offer to wider communities?
The literature on prison education suggests that it has an effect on recidivism, in part surely because it provides them educational experience that can help them get into college—in some cases in some prisons while incarcerated. Embarking on a college degree has high instrumental and motivational value, of course, but I am also interested in the transformative power on identity. Is that measurable? I don’t know, but the testimonials from the members remind me of the best kind of continuing intellectual connection I have with my undergraduates long after they’ve graduated.
5. What do you like about teaching this way?
It is pretty common for new members of the group to ask me variations of this question. Why do I do it? I was originally inspired by a talk by the civil rights leader and Algebra Project founder Robert Moses (Hamilton College Philosophy major, class of 1965) about the necessity of education for democracy; I wanted to be part of a push for greater educational equity. But I have long persisted as least as much for my own growth as a teacher. I have been teaching traditionally aged and largely privileged undergraduates since the start of my career in the mid 1980s—in so many ways an unbelievable joy. But the teaching lens through which you experience the texts is pretty consistent, and it is easy to take for granted what you think students will see, wonder about, and respond to in the standard texts. Prison work allows—and sometimes forces—the blinders to come off. For one thing, the people in this book group do not passively accept the authority of these Great Books and Great Men who wrote them. They also have an uncanny ability to suss out inauthenticity, and they mostly won’t tolerate thought experiments they think are rigged towards a desired outcome. From them, I’ve learned never to talk with any group about an enduring text as if they were unified in their expectations, experiences, or insights—including students I work with in my day job. I’ve always known that in theory, but this practice has helped me to appreciate vividly the blooming, buzzing profusion of what people bring to and see in the works.
An eye-opener case in point: book group members were stopped short and found hilarious the choice of study subjects in Predictably Irrational—namely, 18- to 22-year-old men enrolled at elite universities. Those kids’ responses are supposed to represent human responses to __? Really? The author also claims, for example, that a Thanksgiving host would be offended if guests offered them money rather than a nice bottle of wine. This assertion struck many of them as just plain false; in their families, guests bring and hand over cash to the hosting family, and not only is no one offended, it’s the happy norm.
6. Do you connect your civically engaged work to larger justice issues?
I do. The carceral state in the US is fundamentally unjust (in too many ways to count) and the emphasis on rehabilitation in the US. is at best negligible. Our work stands a tiny bit against that tide.
7. What has been your biggest obstacle in doing civic engagement work?
Hands down getting in. Don’t even ask about the times we have driven the 30 minutes in raging storms—rain, snow, sleet!—only to be turned away by the lobby guard for any number of reasons: no gate clearance, no call out of the men, short staffed so no ride available to the school, hypersensitive metal detector that night and a refusal to wand (at the corrections officer’s discretion), prison on lock down.
Second, inability to get the books to the men. Whole shipments of books or other materials (we can’t bring them in, but have to have them mailed in, for obvious reasons) go missing, never to be found.
8. Have you had a silly/unusual/interesting experience with students as a result of your civic engagement work?
When they learn about my work in prison my traditional undergrad students almost always first ask: How scary is it? Aren’t you afraid? I’m not sure why I still find this unusual. But in fact I am never afraid while in the classroom with my group. I am sometimes afraid when I am buzzed out in to the yard alone and on my way to the van, especially in the winter when it is dark at 6:30.
9. What is your favorite quote and why?
“I’ve never read anything in my life before this class, but I’ve read this book, like, three times already.” This sort of claim is a leitmotiv, and the people saying it are reporting it in wonder about their new identities as readers. The other thing I hear as often as anything are expressions of gratitude. They are constant, and they are heartfelt.
10. What gets you out of bed in the morning? What is your passion?
Okay: 1. COFFEE. 2. I’m a deeply curious person! My passions are critically engaging with ideas—philosophy broadly construed—and fighting for the things I think are important politically, from international policies to establishing a provocative, welcoming campus and classroom climate.
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