Philosophy and Literature Circle Project Receives $1.8 Million Grant

Judith Norman, Ph.D., professor of philosophy at Trinity University, leads the Philosophy and Literature Circle at Trinity with Elly Gonzales ’23, assistant program director. This program brings Trinity students together with incarcerated scholars to foster meaningful dialogue about classic and contemporary literature and philosophy. The program was last covered in 2021, in “A Classroom on the Inside,” and since then, it has grown significantly, reaching more participants and deepening its impact. Trinity University is excited to announce that this program just received a $1.8 million “Imagining Freedom” grant from the Mellon Foundation to support the continuation and expansion of the initiative.

To learn more about how the Philosophy and Literature Circle has grown and will continue to evolve, we asked Norman a few questions about the grant and the project.

How did you secure this grant?

We secured the grant through careful teamwork. Some of the key partners are Elly Gonzales ’23, a post-baccalaureate fellow at Trinity and now the assistant program director; Mel Webb, Ph.D., the program founder who works in partnership with us at UTSA; Catherine Kenyon, director of Foundation Relations here at Trinity; and me, the program director of the Philosophy and Literature Circle at Trinity. The proposal went through several phases and was helped by consultancy with the Jamii Sisterhood, national-level consultants in prison education. 

How has the project progressed since 2021?

The program has progressed considerably since 2021. We returned to in-person visits to the prison starting in Fall 2022, and have had five cohorts with Trinity students and two cohorts without students. We have had guest faculty and lecturers attend the Circle to facilitate our sessions inside the prison. We have had student workers and peer supporters participate as program alumni. This past fall, we had our largest cohort yet at Torres just last semester, and we now have Elly Gonzales, a full-time staff member and program alum, to help administer the program at Trinity.

How will this grant help expand the project further?

We wish to expand our efforts in several ways through this grant: 

• Expanding our programming to new carceral sites
• Working with a publisher to support, curate, edit, and publish writings of incarcerated scholars
• Working with Gemini Ink, a local literary arts organization, to enhance our teaching resources
• Sustaining and strengthening relationships for program accountability through professional development opportunities
• Developing and instituting bespoke, culturally sensitive, community-based evaluation practices (Jelena Todic, Ph.D., at UTSA will take the lead on this)
• Identifying and strengthening support for program alumni and other system-involved people to find pathways for sustained involvement with the Circle
• Incorporating new faculty fellows at the sponsoring institutions through principles-focused facilitator training and assessment.

How will this grant help Trinity develop partnerships and relationships in the community?

The Philosophy and Literature Circle has a distinctive ethos involving creating a collaborative learning environment. Part of the project of this grant will be to introduce some of our techniques for creating this sort of environment in other spaces, including Circles on the Outside where project alumni (including Trinity students, scholars from the prison after their release, Faculty Fellows and community partners) can learn together.

Through the lens of this program, we can recognize that Trinity's learning environment is poorer because it lacks the valuable perspectives of incarcerated students. For this reason, Trinity's support of this program intentionally extends our networks far beyond our own institution and puts students in communication with communities and perspectives they may not otherwise know exist or would not otherwise have a chance to learn alongside.