Co-sponsored by The CAS Equity, Justice, and Inclusion Co-Sponsorship Fund

Over the last five decades, Black women have been one of the fastest-growing segments of the global prison population, thanks to policies that criminalize women for what they do to survive interpersonal and state violence. At select sites, however, women have taken it upon themselves to grow and heal, and have turned to the arts – to theatre – to do the work. Drawing upon more than 10 years of ethnographic fieldwork, Lisa Biggs will discuss why women create theatre to nurture themselves behind bars, and how they use performance to upend the harmful policies that justify locking them away.
 

Lisa Biggs, Ph.D. (she/her), is a performance scholar, actor, and playwright, and the author of the award-winning book, The Healing Stage: Black Women, Incarceration, and the Art of Transformation (Ohio State University Press, 2022). She serves as the John Atwater and Diana Nelson Assistant Professor of the Arts and Africana Studies at Brown University.

Registration is required: https://bit.ly/3VCtYh9