Inside Out - Unmaking Prison Walls

From FH. This presentation will share insights from the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, through which college students take classes inside a prison along with incarcerated classmates. The presenter is Reiko Hillyer, a history professor whose Inside-Out class was documented in the short film, "Classroom 4." Reiko will explore her experience teaching the class and making the film, describing the transformative effects of mutual dialogue and vulnerability. She will also put the class into broader historical context, demonstrating through her scholarly research that the exile of incarcerated people is a recent phenomenon.

Reiko Hillyer is Professor of History Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon and an instructor with the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, which brings college students inside a local prison to study the history of crime and punishment in an integrated class alongside incarcerated students. She holds a B.A. in Political Science from Yale University and a PhD in History from Columbia University, with published research and teaching specialties in the history of the American South, public memory, the built environment, and mass incarceration. Her most recent book, A Wall is Just a Wall: The Permeability of the Prison in the 20th Century United States (Duke, 2024), which was inspired by her teaching in the Inside-Out program, has been featured on CNN and NPR. In 2021, the Oregon Community Foundation awarded Reiko $75,000 to produce a devised theater piece, generated by her Inside-Out students at Columbia River Correctional Institution, at a local professional theater. The piece, "I Think of You," premiered in 2023 at Portland Center Stage. A short documentary about her Inside-Out class, “Classroom 4,” directed by Eden Wurmfeld, is now streaming on PBS and abroad through Al Jazeera, and it was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. Reiko is a native New Yorker who has come to love Portland.