Culture & Captivity

In this episode, Joanne Butcher and Belinda Sherlock discuss Belinda’s research into the meaning of motherhood for women in prison, and the power of creative writing and publishing for people in prison.

They discuss:

• What culture and captivity might mean in the prison context
• Some of the challenges faced by mothers and grandmothers in prison
• Some of the challenges of prison-based research
• Power dynamics in the research space, and working towards more collaborative practices, power sharing and epistemic justice
• The importance of publication for mothers writing from prison

Find the show notes at https://medium.com/@cultcaptpod

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Belinda Sherlock and Wemmy Ogunyankin discuss Wemmy’s research into photographs of recently arrested and incarcerated people taken in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the U.S. and related questions of social, racial and photographic justice.

They discuss:

• Creativity as a form of liberation in captive spaces
• The significant gap in research into photographs of recently arrested/incarcerated Katrina flood victims, and the implications of those photographs
• The emotional impact of researching images that depict violence towards or negligence of these flood victims, particularly young black men in New Orleans
• The ethical challenges and power dynamics within working with images taken without consent, and where consent cannot be retrospectively sought
• A specific photograph taken by photojournalist Kampha Bouaphanh of “looters” being arrested, explored in depth (see details/link below)
• Wemmy’s hope that this research will encourage people to take more time and care looking at images, and to work towards greater epistemic and photographic justice.

Find the show notes at https://medium.com/@cultcaptpod

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Wemmy Ogunyankin and Mary Rehman discuss Mary’s work on seventeenth-century plague journals, and diaries written during COVID-19 Lockdowns in the UK.

Listen as Mary expands the concept of ‘captivity’ beyond the prison narrative to include collective concepts of incarceration in the context of past and present pandemics, by answering questions on the following topics:

• How Mary approached this research, and her methodological process with regards to selecting both early modern and twenty-first-century diaries.
• Her current findings, including some surprising similarities between plague and COVID-19 experience, such as a vested interest in death tolls and official statistics, the appearance of cultures of blame, and the desire to reclaim joy.
• The challenge of ensuring fair representation when it comes to working with personal writings.
• How Mary navigated her personal feelings as she read the diaries, and how the content of Lockdown journals resonated with her own COVID-19 experience.
• The importance of memorialising pandemic experience for future generations.

Find the show notes at https://medium.com/@cultcaptpod

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Mary Rehman talks to Emily Sisson about her research into the overpoliticisation of prison policy since 2010. Listen as Emily discusses the problems with this and outlines why a prison commission might be solution to depoliticising prisons.

She answers questions around the following topics:

• How Emily became interested in this topic for her research and the key research gap in her area.
• Her methodological process and some problems she has been encountering in terms of access to prisons.
• Some of her preliminary findings
• Her thoughts on how her work might impact wider conversations around the penal experience and the importance of depoliticising prisons.

Find the show notes at https://medium.com/@cultcaptpod

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In our first episode, Emily Sisson speaks to Joanne Butcher about her research on cinematic portrayals of human trafficking and modern slavery. Joanne discusses how the topic has been utilised by filmmakers as an allegorical tool to spread ideological narratives.

In this conversation, Joanne touches on the following subjects:

• The complex terminology that surrounds human trafficking and exploitation.
• What interested her about this niche area of research and what she hopes to bring to the conversation with her analysis.
• Where she situates her work academically and her hopes for the research's social impact.
• Her rationale for focussing on popular cinema and why she believes it is important to give this form of mediated discourse serious academic consideration.

Find the show notes at https://medium.com/@cultcaptpod

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.