Journal Issue 3.1
Spring 2011
Edited by Agatha Beins, Deanna Utroske, Julie Ann Salthouse, Jillian Hernandez, and
Karen Alexander
Editorial Assistant: Mimi Zander

Carol Jacobsen, activist, scholar, and social documentary artist,
in conversation with Films for the Feminist Classroom

continued

Introduction and Interview by Deanna Utroske

Utroske: Could you please refer (or link) to a few supporting resources that would be helpful to instructors teaching about the connection between sexual violence and incarceration?

Jacobsen: Here are a few sources:

The Amnesty International Report “Not Part of My Sentence”: Violations of the Human Rights of Women in Custody documents the abuses suffered by women in custody in the United States, including sexual assaults by staff, medical neglect, and other atrocities. http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/001/1999

This American Civil Liberties Union page, http://www.aclu.org/womens-rights/words-prison-sexual-abuse-prison, lists lawsuits by the ACLU in connection with women’s unjust convictions and abusive treatment during incarceration.

The National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence site http://www.ncdsv.org
/publications_prisonabuse.html lists a number of publications on battered women in custody.

The Human Rights Watch Report All Too Familiar, http://www.aclu.org/hrc/
PrisonsStates.pdf , is a report on sexual abuse of women in U.S. state prisons.

Women’s Prison Association is a resource for information on the subject of women in prison. http://www.wpaonline.org/pdf/Quick Facts Women and CJ 2009.pdf

Utroske: You have described yourself as a social documentary artist. What does that mean to you and to the way your work is categorized or encountered?

Jacobsen: It is a cultural term that distinguishes traditional documentary from an engaged and activist documentary practice. Cultural critics such as Martha Rosler, Patricia Zimmerman, Alexandra Juhasz, Lucy Lippard, Nina Felshin, Carol Squiers, Deborah Willis, Carole Vance, Sidonie Smith, and others have written about feminist, grassroots, and social documentary film/video/photography/cultural practice.

Utroske: You work as an activist, with groups like the Michigan Women’s Justice and Clemency Project; as a professor, with the University of Michigan; as an artist, represented by the Denise Bibro Gallery in New York City. These roles seem discrete yet carefully intertwined. Can you talk about the relationships among your work as an activist, as a scholar, and as an artist?

Jacobsen: I work at integrating and balancing these roles because they are interdependent in my life, personally and professionally. I have built lifelong friendships with feminists on both sides of the fence. Activism on this issue means participating in a large feminist/social justice movement that changes at a glacial pace and is deeply frustrating and often depressing. Individually, we have achieved only a handful of actual releases among hundreds of deserving women after twenty years: four clemencies and two court releases for lifers in first-degree murder cases; four paroles for lifers in second-degree murder cases; and a dozen paroles in cases of women who had terms of years. I might have burned out if it were not for my work as an artist, teacher, and writer, which provide access to various feminist communities, opportunities to express my views publicly, and rejuvenation through sharing work and courage with other feminist artists, scholars, attorneys, activists.

Utroske: Once someone (say, a student who just watched From One Prison…) is interested in (feminist) activism or human rights work, what are first, next steps for engaging with the issue of incarcerated women?

Jacobsen: It’s important to do homework, take classes, and read as much as possible on the issues involved to get grounding and confidence and ideas for action. Nonprofits always need volunteers: find out if domestic violence centers, women’s organizations, and others are involved with this issue. American Friends Service Committee, the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch are some examples of organizations that do work on behalf of prisoners’ rights. At the University of Michigan, the School of Social Work, the Law School, the Sociology Department, and the English Department offer classes that go into the jails and prisons, mostly men’s. My friend and colleague, Dr. Lora Lempert, organized all-volunteer college classes in the women’s prison (teaching college classes to incarcerated people is illegal in Michigan, but she achieved this miracle by raising funds herself, persuading professors to volunteer teach, and getting support from legislators to back her). In December 2010, the first woman who began college classes inside that Dr. Lempert organized was able to finish her course work and graduate from the University of Michigan–Dearborn outside of prison. The Domestic Violence Center in Ann Arbor finally got permission in 2010 to run two domestic violence classes in the women’s prison—something we’ve struggled for years to accomplish. One volunteer student with the Michigan Women’s Justice and Clemency Project took it upon herself to collect books to build up the library in the women’s prison. A surgeon who volunteered for several years with the Clemency Project is now a volunteering physician in the men’s prisons. Some students take paralegal courses to volunteer with criminal defense attorneys. It’s critical that citizens keep pounding on prison walls to get in, think up new pilot programs, work with nonprofits, attorneys, domestic violence professionals and others, and band together—and not give up! It is business-as-usual for prisons to deny entry to citizens and scholars, but it’s important to keep trying. Women prisoners especially are hungry for education, domestic violence programs, therapy programs, vocational training, and other assistance, and they have far fewer programs than men prisoners do. The college program and the domestic violence groups here at Huron Valley Women’s Prison have wait lists of several hundred women each.

Utroske: How do you see your work in relation to written texts on the subject of incarcerated women? And how do the two (the film and the written scholarship) function together in the classroom?

Jacobsen: My work is guided, expanded, deepened by feminist theory and writings in law, social work, sociology, visual culture, and other disciplines. I screen my own and others’ films in classes as a basis for discussion, and I assign readings and research so that the visual, written, and theoretical work augment each other, and even become theory-in-practice.

Utroske: Can you please recommend the work of other filmmakers, activists, or scholars, whose work might complement yours in the classroom? Or, what resources, specifically, might instructors teach alongside your films?

Jacobsen:Some of the activists and scholars that I present in my classes include the scholar Angela Y. Davis, who is a prisoner rights activist and prison abolitionist; Lucy Lippard, the cultural critic on activist art; Sidonie Smith, a writer/scholar on feminist autobiography and human rights; Marjorie Heins, a lawyer/scholar/activist and founder of the Free Expression Policy Project; Carole Vance, a writer/scholar/activist who writes on culture wars and sexuality; Ann Snitow, a writer/scholar/activist who writes about the U.S. and international feminist movement.

Among the artists I discuss are Paula Allen, whose photography focuses on “outsider” groups of women in various parts of the world; Lourdes Portillo, filmmaker, who directed Senorita Extraviada on the murders of women in Juarez; Holly Hughes, performance artist/writer on lesbian sexuality; Danielle Abrams, performance artist who addresses race, lesbian sexuality and ethnicity; Rhodessa Jones, performance artist/writer on activist theater with women in prison; Donna Ferrato, whose photography book, Living with the Enemy, is a classic on domestic violence; The Guerrilla Girls, activist artists who call themselves “the conscience of the art world;” Carol Leigh a/k/a Scarlot Harlot, performance artist/writer/activist on prostitutes’ rights; Pat Ward Williams, whose photography examines issues of race and gender; Tequila Minsky, New York photographer/activist on Haiti; Marilyn Zimmerman, photographer/activist who documents Detroit; Connie Samaras, Los Angeles photographer/writer who critiques corporate, military and political cultures; Clarissa Sligh, Philadelphia photographer whose work addresses race and gender. And many more.

Utroske: Please describe your current or next film project.

Jacobsen: Currently, I’m working on a film with Shaun Bangert about street prostitution in Detroit. I made Street Sex more than twenty years ago, and I wanted to take a look at what’s happening with women street workers in Detroit now. After I sat in prostitution court for several days, Judge Leonia Lloyd invited me to meet with her, and later she allowed me to film in her courtroom and to interview women in her office. She is truly a force for change, and it’s an inspiration to watch her in action. She cares deeply about the women who come before her and spends hours on the bench talking with them, encouraging and praising their progress. She is a model for other judges who could learn from her about humanizing their positions as public servants. I’m still sorting out my concerns about jailing the women, however. Jails are not the answer: we need drug treatment, education and vocational training, housing, and other economic and support programs built into the public system for women.

Utroske: What sort of encouragement can you give to artists who aspire to do outreach with their work, who aspire to make pivotal activist art (film or otherwise)?

Jacobsen: It’s deeply rewarding to create your own role as an artist and/or activist in the world and in ways that allow you to participate in change locally, nationally, globally at whatever level(s), for whatever issue(s) you feel strongly about and in whatever way(s) you can. The world needs you!! And the art world needs you!!!