Dr. Elizabeth Nelson, Assistant Professor of Medical Humanities & Health Studies and Adjunct Assistant Professor of History in the IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI has co-edited, along with Michelle Daniel Jones, a first-of-its-kind book titled Who Would Believe a Prisoner?: Indiana Women’s Carceral Institutions, 1848-1920. It brings together a group of incarcerated women at the Indiana Women’s Prison to provide a chronicle of what was originally known as the Indiana Reformatory Institute for Women and Girls, founded in 1873 as the first totally separate prison for women in the United States.
In May, the book grabbed national attention of The New Yorker magazine with a featured article titled “A History of Incarceration by Women Who Have Lived Through It”.