Patrick Alexander at Emory Oxford
Join us for a conversation:
Monday, April 8
3:15 – 5 p.m.
Seney Conference Room (4th floor)
Dr. Patrick Elliot Alexander is Associate Professor of English and African American Studies and co-founder of the University of Mississippi Prison-to-College Pipeline Program. He will be visiting Oxford to discuss his book and his prison advocacy.
Dr. Alexander holds a Ph.D. in English from Duke University. A specialist in African American literature, 19th-century American literature, and critical prison studies, Dr. Alexander published his first book, From Slave Ship to Supermax: Mass Incarceration, Prisoner Abuse, and the New Neo-Slave Novel, with Temple University Press (2018). Dr. Alexander’s articles on teaching African American literature in prison are published in the Journal of African American History, south: a scholarly journal, and Reflections: A Journal of Writing, Service-Learning, and Community Literacy. He has also published several reviews, which appear in American Literature and Obsidian.
Before joining the faculty at the University of Mississippi, Dr. Alexander co-founded and directed Stepping Stones, an award-winning academic enrichment program for imprisoned students based in North Carolina. Through Stepping Stones, he designed and taught five college preparatory seminars in African American literature for imprisoned men at Orange Correctional Center in Hillsborough, North Carolina. As a faculty member at the University of Mississippi, Dr. Alexander has co-founded the Prison-to-College Pipeline Program (PTCPP) with Dr. Otis W. Pickett, Assistant Professor of History at Mississippi College. The PTCPP is a university-community engagement initiative that promotes higher education in prison in response to the ongoing need for increased access to educational opportunities in the state of Mississippi. The PTCPP, winner of the 2018 Humanities Educator Award from the Mississippi Humanities Council, currently offers on-site, humanities-based, for-credit college courses for imprisoned men at Parchman/Mississippi State Penitentiary and for imprisoned women at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility.
