Histories of Incarceration: New Scholarship and Insights for Today
Join us for presentations and conversation on research that illuminates past and present carceral systems. Union’s Historical Studies field is bringing panelists with new books on incarceration in contexts near and far, ancient and recent. At a crisis point in today’s systems, comparing the sometimes similar, sometimes different ways imprisonment has looked in the past helps us rethink the present and reimagine the future.
Date & Time:
Friday, September 19, 2025
2:00 PM – 3:30 PM EST
Online Session
Meet The Speakers:
Mark Letteney is the Carol Thomas Endowed Professor of Ancient History in the Department of History at the University of Washington. He is the author of The Christianization of Knowledge in Late Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and co-author of Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration, with Matthew D. C. Larsen. (University of California Press, 2025) Mark also serves as assistant director on the excavation of the Roman 6th Legion at Legio, Israel, where he directs excavations in the legionary amphitheater.
Jeremy L. Williams, Ph.D. is a native of Huntsville, AL. His recent book Criminalization in Acts of the Apostles: Race, Rhetoric, and the Prosecution of an Early Christian Movement was published with Cambridge University Press. Dr. Williams is Assistant Professor of New Testament at Brite Divinity School where he is also the inaugural director of the Center for Theology and Justice. He has written several articles, and his current research project is a manuscript entitled “Abolitionist Acts of the Apostles: Hermeneutics of Imagination.” It is under contract with Society of Biblical Literature Press. He began his academic work on Acts of the Apostles while studying for the Ph.D. at Harvard University. He earned the M.Div. from Yale Divinity School and received the Henry Hallam Tweedy Award, which is the highest award given to graduating students. He graduated with Highest Honors in Religious Studies and Economics from Vanderbilt University. He is also an Elder in Full Connection in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.
Brianna Nofil is an Assistant Professor of History at William & Mary. Her first book, The Migrant’s Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration, tells the century-long story of migrant detention and resistance in city and county jails. It has been featured in publications including the New Yorker, El País, and The Marshall Project and has received multiple prizes, including the Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians.
