Lisa Guenther, "REACH Coalition: Reciprocal Education and Community Healing on Tennessee's Death Row" (afternoon lecture)

Lisa Guenther is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbit University and the author of Solitary Confinement: Social Death and its Afterlives (Minnesota University Press, 2013) as well as numerous articles in contempoary political theory.

"REACH Coalition: Reciprocal Education and Community Healing on Tennessee's Death Row"

Publc Lecture, Thursday, Feb. 5, 3:30-5:00, Cone 113

Abstract: REACH Coalition is an organization for Reciprocal Education and Community Healing led by insiders on Tennessee’s death row.  Reciprocal education is based on the idea that everyone has something to teach and to learn.  By sharing our experience and ideas with others, we create a community of intellectual, spiritual, and social transformation that may begin to heal from multiple forms of violence.  While many critiques of the death penalty focus narrowly on the goal of abolishing state execution, we are committed to an intersectional analysis of the relation between capital punishment and other social, political, economic, and psychological issues, such as domestic violence, the school to prison pipeline, medical issues, and legal issues such as prosecutorial misconduct and ineffective assistance of counsel.   In this presentation I will share some of the artwork, writing, and social justice projects undertaken by REACH in the past three years.

Cosponsored by the Chancellor's Diversity Challenge Fund