In the 2022–2023 school year, the Carceral State Reading Group focused on building community with organizations on and off-campus committed to the study and struggle around issues related to the carceral state and the politicized nature of imprisonment. Much of our reading and conversations have been guided by Brown University’s acquisition of the papers of Mumia Abu-Jamal. We have tried to orient the group around what it means to have these papers on campus, and our reading discussions have focused on the history and thought of different political prisoners to establish a foundation for approaching the Mumia archive. Several members attended the “Sostre at 100: A Legacy of Action” conference in New York City to continue this study and also build relationships with organizations similarly struggling to uplift and liberate political prisoners. We also attended on-campus events such as a “Creator/Curator” conversation with Johanna Fernandez ’93 around the challenges of housing Mumia’s papers (and her own) on Brown’s campus, as well as the decision to do so in the first place. Given Fernandez’s history of activism on campus, we also gained helpful insight into her community-building and organizing strategies through this engagement.

We also continued to develop relationships with Brown student organizations such as Railroad and Sunrise at Brown around campaigns we all remain invested in, such as Stop Cop City — an ongoing effort to stand in solidarity with Rhode Island organizations. We joined Railroad’s ongoing effort to support currently incarcerated folks in Rhode Island and build inside-outside relationships. We collaborated with (De)cypher journal to examine the relationship between aesthetics and inside-outside study and organized a discussion around the exhibition “Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration.” Along with these student collaborations, we have focused on sustaining relationships with Providence community organizations. We look forward to continuing these partnerships through events in the next year and to continued fervor on campus around Mumia with the archive opening in the fall of 2023.