Two philosophy majors graduating this 12 months from Wesleyan College earned their levels whereas incarcerated.
David Haywood and Lori Gruen in 2018 at commencement ceremony for Haywood’ Affiliate in Arts diploma.
The scholars’ educations have been facilitated via Wesleyan’s Center for Prison Education (CPE).
James Davis III might be graduating with a double main in Philosophy and English. A printed writer, his writings embrace “Law, Prison, and Double-Double Consciousness: A Phenomenological View of the Black Prisoner’s Experience,” which appeared in The Yale Legislation Journal in 2019. Right here’s the summary of the article:
This essay introduces double-double consciousness as a brand new method of conceptualizing the psychological ramifications of being a black prisoner. It begins by revisiting W.E.B. DuBois’s idea of double consciousness. It then affords a phenomenological exposition of double-double consciousness—the double consciousness that the black prisoner got here to jail with, coupled with the double consciousness that the black prisoner develops in jail. Thought and feeling, time and house are all completely different within the jail. This world relentlessly imposes the prisoner identification on all those that inhabit it, requiring them to reconcile their new standing with their conceptions of self. Primarily based by myself expertise as a black prisoner, I conclude that double-double consciousness is a mechanism via which the prisoner can keep dignity regardless of residing in captivity.
David Haywood might be graduating with Excessive Honors in Philosophy. Lori Gruen, a philosophy professor at Wesleyan who works with the CPE, says that Mr. Haywood is “the primary of our Heart for Jail Training’s pupil to aim an honors thesis and was terrifically profitable.” He’s additionally the 2023 Smart Prize recipient, a prize established by Daniel Smart (Wesleyan class of 1859), to acknowledge pupil excellence in philosophy. Mr. Haywood’s thesis is entitled “On Being Haunted: Affective Violence in Colonial Modernity.” Professor Gruen says:
It is a profound work of interdisciplinary philosophical scholarship that provides voice to the expertise of the emotional, embodied terror of being disappeared. Haywood’s thesis addresses what it means to expertise what he calls “haunting or affective violence” and the way to withstand it. Writing an honors thesis whereas in jail, with very restricted entry to a pc on which to sort and no web entry, appeared virtually unattainable. It’s a testomony to David Haywood’s dedication and imaginative and prescient that this sensible work was accomplished.
In 2021, three incarcerated college students earned their undergraduate levels in philosophy from Wesleyan.
