Books Behind Bars: Life, Literature, and Leadership is a ten-year-old educational program in which university students meet with committed youth at a maximum-security juvenile correctional center to explore questions of meaning, value, and social justice though conversations about Russian literature classics.
Participants discuss personally relevant topics ranging from family to death, and success to moral responsibility. These interactions become the catalyst for both groups to learn from one another and share their most intimate human stories, while at the same time forming powerful connections and challenging whatever stereotypes about the other group they may have entered the class with. Correctional center students and university students come away transformed by this unique educational experience—moved by their discovery of the relevance of classical literature, inspired by the humanity in one another, and empowered to pursue lives of greater purpose and meaning.
Books Behind Bars has been featured on the Today Show, Katie Couric, NPR, and Russian national television, as well as in the Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Moscow Times. Seats at the Table, a feature-length documentary about the program, has been shown at film festivals throughout the United States, in France, and the UK, and in 2020 it will air nationally on PBS.
