CURRENTS: Humanities Work Now with Elaine MacDougall (English) and Ghazal Mojtahedi (HCC)
Understanding and Defining Multiple Literacies and Their Implementation in Higher Education in Prison Programs
While prison education programs have largely been proven to be beneficial to the participants, we need to critique and define distinctive prison literacies and the pedagogical practices we utilize and learn from in our classrooms. Implementing a broader view of higher education and literacy in prison could help expand previous understandings of literacy and how it is inextricably linked to “societal and historical forces beyond the classroom.”. In analyzing the data from semi-structured interviews, writing teachers in prison education programs can open up a dialogue and learn about the effectiveness of various literacy-based prison education programs, as well as specific writing classes, and how these programs can best serve the student participants while inside the prison environment, as well as upon their release.
AND
The Inevitable Sprouting
Ghazal Mojtahedi, Doctoral Student, Human-Centered Computing
In mid-January 2026, millions of people across Iran took to the streets demanding freedom and an end to authoritarian rule. The protests were met with lethal force, and many demonstrators were killed by live ammunition. In the aftermath, authorities attempted to suppress information about the victims. In many cases, the names of those who were killed were not officially acknowledged, and families were discouraged or prevented from publicly mourning. In response, citizens and activists began voluntarily collecting and sharing the names of victims through informal networks. This collective act of gathering and preserving names became itself a form of resistance and civic witnessing. This project engages with datasets of names connected to these events, including records that remain uncertain or incomplete. Rather than presenting this information through conventional charts or statistics, the work translates the data into a living process. Seeds are planted to represent individuals whose fate remains unconfirmed or whose names have been partially erased from public record. As the seeds grow over time, the installation becomes a living visualization of absence, uncertainty, and collective memory.
Join via WebEx: https://umbc.webex.com/umbc/j.php?MTID=m01e07cced8c55ac61c1e32fa106be40c
