Beyond Prisons

Beyond Prisons Co-host Kim Wilson interviews Michelle Jones about her work as an artist, activist, and historian. Michelle shares the projects that she’s currently working on and she reflects on what it’s like to be a third-year graduate student working on her dissertation proposal. She speaks to Kim about reentry for women in Indiana, having a soft place to land after incarceration, and her fight for sentence modification so that she could attend grad school after having spent 20 years in prison. Michelle speaks candidly about what it means to her to have a spiritual practice, her art installation “Point of Triangulation” and the need for arts-based research. They round out the hour by addressing the problematic notion of exceptionalism with regards to prisoners and former prisoners, Michelle’s response to being "thingified" by the media, as well as what it was like to have academics attempt to co-opt the work that she and other women historians did inside. Michelle Jones is a third-year doctoral student in