Prison Stories: Women Scholars’ Experiences Doing Research Behind Bars

This book looks deeply at women researchers’ personal stories, struggles, and successes within the context of conducting research in the male-dominated sphere of prison studies. Their insights provide an analytical resource from which readers can better understand the context of doing prison research and the theoretical and methodological challenges that come with it. Their autoethnographic stories shed light on the unique issues faced by women prison researchers and provide a roadmap for understanding the novel strategies, methodological landmines, and epistemological challenges for those who will come after them. Their experiences as women investigators are couched in a distinct set of challenges. This book is intended to highlight those researchers’ challenges and also, to celebrate their successes.

Table of Contents:
Introduction, Jennifer A. Schlosser Part I - If We Knew Then: Lessons from the Field Chapter 1: The Endlessly Fascinating and Depressing Rabbit Hole of Prisons: Being a Woman Researching in a Man's World, Kathryn J. Fox Chapter 2: Reflections on Team Research in Carceral Settings, Keramet Reiter, Dallas Augustine, Melissa Barragan, Kelsie Chesnut, Gabriela Gonzalez, & Natalie Pifer Chapter 3: A Woman's Place: A Critical Examination of Methodological Landmines in Prison Research, Jennifer A. Schlosser Part II - Locating Our Selves: Stories of Belonging Chapter 4: Cloaked in Liminality: Negotiating Roles, Identity, and Emotional Labor Within and Between Prison Walls and Academia, Shenique Thomas-Davis Chapter 5: “Just Listen, People!”: Narrative as Resistance in Criminological Research, Abigail Kolb Part III - Blurring the Lines: Tales of Personal Connection Chapter 6: Complicity and Compassion: Mediations on Writing and Researching with Incarcerated Women, Tobi Jacobi Chapter 7: Empathy and Identity

About the Author :
Jennifer A. Schlosser is assistant professor of sociology at Coastal Carolina University.

Review :
This engaging collection of essays offers a glimpse into the working lives and experiences of a collection of well-known female prison researchers in the US and the UK. In a series of intimate accounts, they not only offer practical advice to younger colleagues, but also reflect on quite personal aspects of their academic careers. In its focus on female researchers this book inspires reflection about the role of gender in the construction of knowledge. Many of the authors acknowledge their class and educational privileges relative to the men and women in prison, as well as their racial differences. Coming to the end of the book, I found myself wishing for a companion volume of papers by the research participants. Perhaps that could be the editor’s next project. For now, this book will fill an important gap in methods training for prisons researchers. This collection brings rare emotional honesty and intellectual discernment to research in prisons as it grapples with the gendered, always deeply political aspect of undertaking it. The stories will inspire a new generation of scholars working across carceral boundaries and other social hierarchies.