Anoop Mirpuri

This project examines the relation between US prison growth, neoliberalism, and the construction of the prisoner in liberal public culture since the late 1960s. It offers a cultural materialist history of the rise of prison literature as a category of scholarship and publication. In the process, it elaborates a new conceptual framework for reading the archive of un-freedom called “abolitionist cultural studies.” The grant will support the manuscript’s development during the summer of 2019.