feminist teacher volume 26 numbers 2–3 115 © 2018 by the board of trustees of the university of illinois It was a chilly October evening. 1 There were leaves swirling outside the class- room windows, grazing the barbed wire and chain link fences. We hunkered down in our seats because the heat hadn’t yet been turned on inside our prison class- room. Standing in front of the class, Molly 2 reached the crescendo of her manifesto and tilted her head. Bundled up in lay- ers of clothes, we were rapt, hanging on her every word. She instructed us to turn to the person nearest and look her in the eye. Grabbing the edges of the desk, Molly continued: “Deep into their eyes. And when I say, ‘Whose lives matter?’ take a breath in and you say to her, ‘Your life matters.’” Around the room, women turned to one another. “Whose life mat- ters?” Molly forcefully asked. Looking into Kelly’s slightly bloodshot brown eyes, Michelle stated, “Your life matters.” Simul- taneously, Kelly pointed at her seatmate Michelle, “Yours Michelle.” Other women repeated the phrase to one another throughout the classroom. Molly nod- ded, “That’s right!” We all applauded and cheered, prompting the two service dogs 3 to frantically wag their tails. Beyond my grandest expectations, this assignment, the result of wrestling with the limitations of teaching in a maximum-security prison, produced a sensational and moving expe- rience of sociological pedagogy for both the students and me. Participatory action research into col- lege programs like Bedford Hills College Program (BHPC) consistently reveals posi- tive outcomes, including personal trans- formation and civic engagement as well as lower re-incarceration rates after release (Fine et al.). Yet conducting this type of research is not without significant chal- lenges. Jane Maher, a writing professor with sixteen years’ experience at Bedford Hills, aptly summarizes the mundane experiences of teaching at the prison. There are the security protocols that seem to change arbitrarily depending on which officer is on duty; the background checks and fingerprinting and annual tuberculosis testing; the rules and regulations about what and who can go in and out and when this can occur; the automatic gates and concertina wire and hand stamping and searching of belongings and head counts; the lack of the most basic necessities such as copy The Manifesto Assignment: Study with Women Prisoners LISA JEAN MOORE __s __n lc FT 26_2-3.indd 115 11/14/17 11:58 AM