In This Place Called Prison offers a vivid account of religious life within an institution designed to punish. Rachel Ellis conducted a year of ethnographic fieldwork inside a U.S. state women’s prison, talking with hundreds of incarcerated women, staff, and volunteers. Through their stories, Ellis shows how women draw on religion to navigate lived experiences of carceral control. A trenchant study of religion colliding and colluding with the state in an enduring tension between freedom and constraint, this book speaks to the quest for dignity and light against the backdrop of mass incarceration, state surveillance, and American inequality.
By:
Rachel Ellis
Imprint: University of California Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 210mm,
Width: 140mm,
Spine: 18mm
Weight: 318g
ISBN: 9780520384545
ISBN 10: 0520384547
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 20 July 2023
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Contents Introduction 1. Thou Shalt Not: A Day in Prison 2. Let There Be Light: Religious Life Behind Bars 3. The Lord Is My Shepherd: Protestant Messages of God’s Redemptive Plan 4. Blessed Is The Fruit Of Thy Womb: Gender, Religion, and Ideologies of the Family 5. For Many Are Called, But Few Are Chosen: Status and Dignity in the Prison Church Conclusion Epilogue: Out of the House of Bondage Acknowledgments Methodological Appendix Notes References Index
Rachel Ellis is Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland.
Reviews for In This Place Called Prison: Women's Religious Life in the Shadow of Punishment
"""This book is highly valuable as an experience that helps readers build a mental schema of some of the women inmates’ realities of incarceration."" * Affilia: Feminist Inquiry in Social Work *"
