Author John Edgar Wideman Joins Discussion On Prison-Based Think Tanks

MacArthur Fellow and literary-award-winner John Edgar Wideman will discuss think tanks as tools for social justice at the two-day Gaultier Symposium on Community-Engaged Teaching and Research.

The national Gaultier Symposium, which is slated for Thursday, Oct. 9, and Friday, Oct. 10, was developed by Dr. Norman Conti through his Gaultier Faculty Fellowship with Duquesne’s Center for Community-Engaged Teaching and Research. The event is sponsored by the University and its Center for Catholic Intellectual Tradition, and is being held in collaboration with the Association of Applied and Clinical Sociology and The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program.

Off-campus events for the symposium include classes and working sessions at the State Correctional Institute (SCI) of Pittsburgh and the Allegheny County Jail (advance clearances required). The Gaultier events are open to the campus community.

For seven years, classes where incarcerated men and college students learn together have been offered by the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts. Conti, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and the Graduate Center for Social and Public Policy, has collaborated with seven men—most serving life sentences at SCI Pittsburgh—to form a think tank as a pilot project for advancing community engagement across campus.

Wideman’s brother, Robert, who is the subject of the award-winning 1984 book Brothers and Keepers, has taken three Inside-Out classes while incarcerated and is a founding member of the think tank. John Edgar Wideman, professor of Africana studies and literary arts at Brown University, will deliver Brothers and Keepers 30 Years Later: A Reading, on Oct. 10 at 4 p.m. in the Africa Room. He will then participate in a 5 p.m. panel, titled Think Tanks as Mechanisms for Social Justice, with Dr. Tony Gaskew, director of the criminal justice program and associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Pittsburgh-Bradford, and rapper-activist Jasiri Xl. Moderator will be Lenny McAllister, host of PCNC-TV’s NightTalk.

Other events include:

Thursday, Oct. 9
Basic Philosophical Questions Inside-Out at the Allegheny County Jail with Dr. Jeff McCurry, director of the Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center, and Duquesne’s Justicia Learning Community.

Conti and other panelists will discuss Sociology Inside-Out: Civic Engagement and the Sociological Imagination, 3 to 5 p.m. in the Scranton Room of the DoubleTree Hotel Conference Center.

Friday, Oct. 10
Working session with The Elsinore Bennu: An Inside-Out Think Tank at SCI Pittsburgh.

Dr. Lina Dostilio, director of the Center for Community-Engaged Teaching and Research, will moderate a discussion Duquesne University Inside-Out. The 3 p.m. panel in the Africa Room will include alumni speakers and be followed by the Wideman reading and panel. Refreshments will be provided.