
Credit: Justin Lang
The 2023–2024 Carceral State Reading Group renewed its purpose as a space for critical reflection and honest conversation amid several local, national, and global crises related to the group’s focus on contemporary conditions of captivity and carceral power. The university’s acquisition of Mumia Abu-Jamal’s archive provided a lens through which we examined ongoing practices of criminalizing and repressing dissent. The group contributed to public conversation with a symposium titled “[Autonomy] Amid Fascism” on March 8–9, 2024, featuring a seminar with Professor Felicia Denaud on “western fundamentalism,” a discussion between authors William C. Anderson and Ashani Alston on contemporary organizing, and a screening of “The Pendleton 2: They Stood Up,” a documentary on the case of Naeem Trotter and Balagoon Cole, currently held political prisoners in Indiana DOC. Recordings and transcriptions of the event will continue to serve as resources for discussion, calls to action, and archives of this historical moment.