IMPRISONMENT IS THEF" - WHY WE MUST ABOLISH PRISONS IN CANADA

A PRESENTATION BY Dr. LISA GUENTHER

October 17th at 6 :00 p.m.
 

Centennial Theatre (Bishop’s University Campus) Open to the general public. Admission is free.

In her book Are Prisons Obsolete?, former political prisoner Angela Davis argues that slavery is still alive and well in United States prisons. She points to the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolishes slavery “except for those who have been duly convicted of a crime,” to argue that the abolition of slavery will not be complete until prisons are also abolished. In this lecture, Dr. Lisa Guenther will examine the arguments for prison abolition in Canada, where slavery was practiced on a much smaller scale. She will present a critical analysis of the relation between land, colonization, and incarceration points the way towards a specifically Canadian argument for prison abolition.

Dr. Lisa Guenther, Queen’s National Scholar in Political Philosophy and Critical Prison Studies at Queen’s University will address the general public in this year’s Tait-Chattopadhyay Memorial Lecture. She is the author of Solitary Confinement: Social Death and its Afterlives (2013) and co-editor of Death and Other Penalties: Philosophy in a Time of Mass Incarceration (2015). From 2012-17, she facilitated a discussion group with men on death row in Tennessee called REACH Coalition. She is currently a member of the P4W Memorial Collective, whose goal is to create a memorial garden for women who lived and died at the Kingston Prison for Women (P4W).

The Tait-Chattopadhyay Memorial Lecture is an annual event held by the Humanities Department of the Lennoxville Campus of Champlain College. The Lecture was inspired by the careers of Savithri Chattopadhyay and Ian Tait, two professors who were deeply committed to encouraging students and community members to reflect critically on intellectual, social and cultural issues in contemporary society. This 29th annual lecture aims to honour and continue their work.

The lecture is made possible thanks to the funding provided by the Humanities Department of Champlain College and the Bishops University Lecture Fund as well as the support of the Philosophy and Sociology Departments of Bishops University

Champlain College - Lennoxville
Shane McDonald
Information & Communications
smcdonald@crc-lennox.qc.ca