Professor of Comparative Literature Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz presented the keynote address at the Women’s Classical Committee of the United Kingdom general meeting in London on May 18.
Her talk was titled “Classics and Activism: A Contradiction in Terms?” and addressed the recent history of activism in the profession, including scholarship, teaching, and political work for social justice. The conclusion to the paper focused on Rabinowitz’s (and other classicists’) prison teaching.
Later in the month, Rabinowitz was a member of a panel on prison teaching at the Humanities in Prison symposium at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Her talk centered on her work with the Hamilton Oneida Prison Education project and the ways in which it reveals the benefits of a humanistic education. Rabinowitz argues that “prison teaching can offer an example of the examined life.”
Finally, Rabinowitz spent two weeks working with Rhodessa Jones, director of the Medea Project: Theatre for Incarcerated Women and HIV Circle. That residency will result in a book authored by Jones.
