Brandon Brown

The Freedom & Captivity Curriculum Project will create curricula based on the materials generated through the Fall 2021 collaborative, statewide public humanities Freedom & Captivity initiative, which explored how to imagine an abolitionist future in Maine. The initiative included exhibitions, podcasts, film and photography projects, performances, presentations, workshops, and didactic materials, and was created with the participation of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. These materials are collected into an online archive, which will be the basis for creating curricula to be uploaded onto technology used inside Maine’s prisons. The curricula, structured around key humanities themes, is for college courses, discussion groups, and community classes taught by incarcerated people. The community partners for this project include Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition, Maine Department of Corrections, Maine Prison Education Partnership, and Opportunity Scholars Network.

Freedom & Captivity will build a digital archive of carceral experience - the hidden stories of Maine’s incarcerated community members - and perform that archive at venues across the state. The curated archive will be housed at the Maine Memory Network, Maine Historical Society’s digital history platform, and all the material collected for the project will be archived in Colby College Library’s Digital Collections. This will be the first archival space in Maine to hold stories about incarceration, curated and sensitively contextualized by those most impacted by carcerality. By offering a platform for the voices of those previously silenced by carcerality, our project aims to shift the narrative around justice, accountability, and the need for incarceration in the wake of harm.