Mary Katzenstein
Professor and Acting Chair
Department of Government
Inside/Out: Crime and Punishment in the United States
In my application for the Kaplan Family Fellowship, I propose to establish a
spring semester class taught at one of the local adult prisons in which Cornell
students and student-inmates will be jointly enrolled. The idea for this class
has evolved out of my experience teaching Government 314 (Prisons) over the past
five years on the Cornell campus and my experience this current semester volunteering
an evening a week teaching a course on theories of power at Auburn prison. This
will constitute a service-learning class in the sense that it will involve Cornell
students in experiential learning about the criminal justice system. Through
the final class project on voting/felony disenfranchisement, moreover, the expectation
is that both sets of students will be motivated to think deeply about the meanings
of citizenship and political participation. The class will include 10-15 students
from campus and 10-15 students from the selected facility.
