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Rachel Marie-Crane
Williams
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR,
UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
HOW DO WOMEN
END UP IN THE
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
SYSTEM? THEIR
JOURNEY OFTEN
BEGINS IN GIRLHOOD.
PERHAPS THEY
ARE BORN POOR,
OR BLACK, MAYBE
LATINO OR MAYBE
THEY ARE BORN TO
A TEEN MOTHER.
While Rachel is an artist she is also an academic scholar. Her traditional
scholarship has been focused on women in prison. She has worked with
incarcerated women since 1994. The prisons where she has conducted
research include the Monroe County Jail in Key West, Florida, Jefferson
Correctional Institution in Florida, Taycheedah Correctional Institution in
Wisconsin, Deerlodge Correctional Institution in Montana, the State
Training School in Eldora, Iowa, the Iowa Juvenile Home in Toledo, Iowa,
the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women in Mitchellville, Iowa and
HMP Holloway in London, England. She has visited and toured numerous
other correctional institutions in the U.S. In 2010, she enrolled in the
Inside-Out Prison Education Program through Temple University (www.
insideoutcenter.org). Her scholarship has been published by the Journal
of Correctional Education, The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and
Society, the Journal of Art Education, and Visual Arts Research. She is
also the Co-Editor of the Marilyn Zurmuehlen Working Papers. Rachel
teaches courses about comics and sequential art, womens studies,
intermedia, feminist research methods, and civic engagement. Her work
can be explored at http://redmagpie.org.
Rachel Marie-Crane Williams, is an artist and teacher
currently employed as an associate professor at the
University of Iowa. She has a joint appointment
between the School of Art and Art History (Intermedia)
and Gender Womens and Sexuality
Studies. She is originally from North
Carolina (the Eastern Coastal Plain),
but she has lived in Iowa since 1998,
and taught at The University of Iowa
since 1999. Her work as a researcher
and creative scholar has always been focused on
womens issues, community, art, and people who are
incarcerated. She earned a B.F.A. in Painting and
Drawing from East Carolina University and an M.F.A.
(Studio Art) and a Ph.D. (Art Education) from Florida
State University.
American alternative/single creator comics and
graphic novels have been at the heart of her creative
scholarship for the past few years. Her graphic
scholarship has been published by the Jane Addams
Hull House Museum, the Journal of Cultural Research
in Art Education, and the International Journal of Comic
Art. Her current projects include a graphic novel about
the Detroit Race Riots of 1943, a mini comic about
police brutality, and The Prison Chronicles, a series
of stories about working in womens prisons.
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