The Bard Prison Initiative

Presentation by Delia Mellis (Bard College, USA) "The Bard Prison Initiative" in the framework of the Seminar on "Practices of Liberal Education".

The Bard Prison Initiative enrolls students in degree programs across six prisons and now also outside of prison through community-based microcolleges. From their first encounter with Bard College during the admissions process, thinking through writing is central to the experience of students of the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI). With writing at its core, the BPI curriculum is built to support, challenge, and deepen students' intellectual identities and academic skills, from the First-Year Seminar through the Senior Project. In this talk, Delia Mellis, Director of Program and Faculty Development, will describe and explain BPI's writing curriculum as it has developed in dialogue with students and faculty, and in relationship to the goals and practices of the liberal arts education at Bard.

Delia bio: Delia Mellis is Director of Program and Faculty Development for the Bard Prison Initiative. A historian of race and gender in the United States, she has been a member of the BPI faculty since 2008 and joined its administration in 2011. An Associate of Bard's Institute for Writing and Thinking, Mellis holds a Ph.D. in United States History from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a B.A. from Bard College.