The Rikers Island Trilogy with Dr. Jarrod Shanahan

The Rikers Island Trilogy: Social History, Prison Ethnography, and Activist Scholarship. Dr. Jarrod Shanahan discusses his Rikers Island Trilogy, a unique project that approaches a single site—New York City’s Rikers Island penal colony—from three distinct methodologies. Shanahan will discuss Captives: How Rikers Island Took New York City Hostage (Verso, 2022), a social history of the island; City Time: On Being Sentenced to Rikers Island (NYU Press, 2025), an immersive ethnography of daily life for its sentenced men co-authored with David Campbell; and Skyscraper Jails: The Abolitionist Fight Against Jail Expansion in New York City (Haymarket, 2025), an activist-scholarship intervention into debates about the closure of Rikers and the future of incarceration in New York City, co-authored with Dr. Zhandarka Kurti. Jarrod Shanahan is an associate professor of criminal justice at Governors State University. Co-Sponsored By: BU Undergraduate Sociology Association (BUUSA) & BU Prison Outreach Initiative