A hearty welcome back from spring break (at least for you UT folks) from all of us at AMS :: ATX. We're kicking off the week by sharing what promises to be a fascinating panel discussion featuring one of our own graduate students, Elissa Underwood, as a panelist.Details below from the official event announcement:

In advance of the 12th Annual Sequels Symposium, the second Prequels event of Spring 2013 will focus on the work of  Peter Caster, one of the conference's keynote speakers and a distinguished alumnus of the English department. Caster’s recent book,  Prisons, Race, and Masculinity in Twentieth-Century U.S. Literature and Film (2008), is grounded in the proposition that “the history, literary and otherwise, of the United States is indivisible from that of its prisons.”Inspired by this work, a panel of graduate students, faculty members, and activists will offer perspectives and narratives that capture the realities of the American prison industrial complex. This discussion will open with a brief video montage of scenes from TV and film that best represent how American popular culture depicts the national prison system. In response to this montage, our panelists will share how their work reveals and communicates the realities of prison life in the United States. Panelists include  Melissa Burch (Graduate Student, Anthropology),  Rebecca Lorins (Texas After Violence Project),  Elissa Underwood(Graduate Student, American Studies),  Benet Magnuson (Policy Attorney, Texas Criminal Justice Coalition), and E3W's very own  Barbara Harlow, who will serve as a moderator and respondent. We hope you will join us and add your voice to the discussion.