Prisoners engage in often hazardous work including fighting wildfires, but incarcerated people have also built highways, dams, forests, parks, and buildings. How do prisoners become laborers and what kind of work do they often end up doing?
On the next Fiat Lux Redux, Tuesday, March 4th at 9AM, PhD candidates at UC Berkeley Elizabeth Hargrett and Xander Lenc discuss Prison Labor Legacies and how prisoner labor has shaped American infrastructure with Matrix Podcast host Julia Sizek.
There is no central database for the tens of thousands of infrastructural projects built by prisoners in the United States, and there is no collaborative platform for historians, geographers, sociologists, and other scholars of the prison to circulate their findings. In response, Hargrett and Lenc co-directed the Carceral Labor Mapping Project at Social Science Matrix to foster collaboration between carceral scholars and provide pedagogical tools for educators seeking to demystify the carceral landscape.
Elizabeth Hargrett is a PhD candidate in UC Berkeley’s history department. Her work explores North Carolina’s history of convict labor and shows how carceral networks shaped, and in turn were shaped by, the state’s highway systems, scenic tourism industries, and landscapes in the early decades of the 20th century.
Xander Lenc is a PhD candidate in UC Berkeley’s geography department. His research explores the historical foundations of California incarceration beyond the criminal justice system: in ecology, urban design, maritime architecture, medical science, and mining. He examines why it is so difficult to imagine justice without incarceration and argues that any meaningful solution to mass incarceration in the United States requires a complete overhaul of our geography.
Fiat Lux Redux presents previously aired lectures, conversations, and podcasts originating on the campus of UC Berkeley every other Tuesday from 9am to 9:30am. These often-lengthy original programs have been edited to a 30-minute format by experienced KALX producers. The show’s name, Latin for “Let there be light”, is a reference to the University of California’s motto, which is also Fiat Lux. The show’s goal is to provide listeners with a window into the intellectual and cultural life of UC Berkeley and to showcase the wide range of subjects and diversity of thought and ideas that are present at UC Berkeley.
