CLASS DESCRIPTION
This class offers a multifaceted approach to anti-carceral feminism based on literary works of various genres, including essays, fiction, and poetry, as well as a reflection on the demands of organisations working to defend the rights of imprisoned women and the abolition of prisons. Based on Angela Davis' analysis on how gender structures the incarceration system, the class will dive into several literary works written inside and about prisons. In parallel, it will study collective struggles that denounce incarceration as a method of social control, emphasising the double punishment that the penal system represents for women and their families. Authors such as Albertine Sarrazin, Nawal El Saadawi, Patricia Heras, Donna Hylton, Assata Shakur, among others, will form a literary corpus to analyse the most relevant aspects of structure and style when the act of writing is conditioned by confinement. Likewise, this class will offer an overview of international civil organisations, such as Sisters Inside and La Corda Presxs, whose paradigms propose a transfeminist, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist critique of the penitentiary system.
ABOUT OUR LECTURER
Vivi Alfonsín (Varna, 1977). Cuban writer. Her work offers a feminist critique of racism and colonial structures. Author of the novels Mundo Zurdo and Ningún otro infierno te espera; the essay Violence and Death on the Frontiers, The Ethical Limits of Hypervisibility, published by Errant Journal; and the plays Kleopatra o Infirmitas Sexus and Aguas Grises. She is contributor to Píkara Magazine, Jacobin América Latina, El Salto, Público, La Directa, Ctxt, among others. She is a member of the artistic collective Naixem Cridant, which focuses on collective creation processes in women's prisons in Catalonia from an anti-carceral feminist perspective. She has been awarded the Montserrat Roig Scholarship for the writing of High-Cost Country, a novel about the links between deindustrialisation, racism and police violence. She has a degree in Performing Arts and Social Action from the Institut del Teatre, Barcelona; and postgraduate studies in Popular Feminisms in Abya Yala from the University of Jujuy, Argentina; and in Literature and Feminisms in Contemporary Asia and Africa from the UNAM.
INSTAGRAM: @vivialfonsin
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This is a recording of a live session hosted by The Feminist Lecture Program in March 2026. The reading list for the class can be found alongside this rental.
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