Dr Jo Metcalf

Dr Jo Metcalf

Senior Lecturer in American Studies & Criminology

Faculty and Department

  • Faculty of Arts Cultures and Education
  • School of Criminology, Sociology and Policing

Summary

Josephine Metcalf is a Senior Lecturer in American Studies at the University of Hull, UK. She is the co-founder and co-director of the Cultures of Incarceration Centre and Programme Director for the MA in Incarceration Studies.

Jo’s research centres on representations of gangs and prisons in a range of cultural forms and the ways in which these have been received by audiences. Her first monograph, entitled The Culture and Politics of Contemporary Street Gang Memoirs, was released in 2012 and she has co-edited two collections of essays, one on Ice-T (with Will Turner, 2014) and the other on African American culture and society after Rodney King (with Carina Spaulding, 2015). She has published on the life and works of Luis J Rodriguez, narratives by former prisoner Shaun Attwood, and Guantanamo Bay memoirs. Jo recently wrote a foreword for an anniversary edition of Joseph Bathanti’s award-winning prison novel, Coventry, and is currently working on a monograph about contemporary US prison literature as well as an edited collection on Luis J Rodriguez with Ben Olguín from UCSB (both with EUP).

In 2019, Jo finished working with a group of former prisoners on a British Academy / Arts Council-funded project entitled ‘Pop-Culture, and Transatlantic Perspectives: How Former UK Prisoners Interpret American (Penal) Culture’. The project resulted in a collection of creative writings, Hope Walks by Me that Bonnie Greer hailed her “book of the year” in the FT book review. During the pandemic Jo delivered a cutting-edge module on ‘US & UK Prison Culture; Redemption & Resistance’ at HMP Hull, digitally supported by specially adapted chromebooks for the prison learners. She is currently working on a HEIF-funded project called "Prison Officers & Creativity; Supporting the Self & the Inmate" as well as running an American Studies themed book club at HMP Hull. Jo has also just started working with Dr Kristen Drybread at the University of Colorado, Boulder on a British Academy funded project, “Shaping Prison Pedagogy through Transatlantic Cultural Exchange” and from February - July 2023, she will be a Visiting Scholar at the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Recent outputs

View more outputs

Book Chapter

The Literary and Activist Works of Luis J. Rodríguez

Metcalf, J. (2020). The Literary and Activist Works of Luis J. Rodríguez. In L. G. Mendoza (Ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latina and Latino Literature. New York: Oxford University Press

" 'O Prison Darkness … Lions in the Cage'; The 'Exceptional' Prison Narratives of Guantanamo Bay"

Metcalf, J. (2020). “ ‘O Prison Darkness … Lions in the Cage’; The ‘Exceptional’ Prison Narratives of Guantanamo Bay”. In The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Media (67-87). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36059-7

Foreword to Coventry

Metcalf, J. (2019). Foreword to Coventry. . Livingston, Alabama: Livingston Press

"Narrating Prison Violence and Masculinity in the Shaun Attwood Trilogy"

Metcalf, J. (2018). “Narrating Prison Violence and Masculinity in the Shaun Attwood Trilogy”. In Perpetrating Selves: Doing Violence, Performing Identity. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96785-1

Journal Article

"Reading America, Reading Rodriguez: Exploring American Literature at an English Prison Book Group"

Metcalf, J., & Skinner, L. (in press). "Reading America, Reading Rodriguez: Exploring American Literature at an English Prison Book Group". Journal of American Studies,

Lead investigator

Project

Funder

Grant

Started

Status

Project

Shaping Prison Pedagogy through Transatlantic Cultural Exchange

Funder

British Academy

Grant

£53,059.00

Started

15 March 2023

Status

Ongoing

Project

HIKE: Freedom Festival - UoH Book Groups at HMP Hull & HMP Full Sutton

Funder

AHRC Arts & Humanities Research Council

Grant

£11,283.00

Started

1 January 2024

Status

Ongoing

Project

Reading America, Reading Loneliness; Prison Book Groups at HMP Hull & HMP Full Sutton

Funder

British Association of American Studies

Grant

£1,500.00

Started

1 January 2024

Status

Ongoing

Project

Prison Culture & Creative Writing

Funder

ACE Arts Council of England

Grant

£12,255.00

Started

1 September 2018

Status

Complete

Project

HEIF: Developing Effective University-Prison Partnership Policies: The Prisoner’s Perspective on the Educational Resources offered on in-cell TV at HMP Hull

Funder

00 University of Hull

Grant

£3,241.00

Started

1 January 2022

Status

Complete

Project

HEIF: Prison Officers and Creativity; Supporting the Self and the Inmate

Funder

00 University of Hull

Grant

£43,112.00

Started

1 August 2022

Status

Complete

Project

HIKE: Visiting Research Fellow at UCSB for global development of Prison Projects

Funder

AHRC Arts & Humanities Research Council

Grant

£6,000.00

Started

1 November 2022

Status

Complete

Project

Seed Funding: UK-US Collaborative Workshop On Violence

Funder

British Academy

Grant

£1,400.00

Started

1 April 2018

Status

Complete

Project

Prison, Pop-Culture, and Transatlantic Perspectives: How UK (ex) Prisoners Interpret American (Penal) Culture

Funder

HCC Hull City Council

Grant

£1,350.00

Started

1 September 2018

Status

Complete

Postgraduate supervision

Dr Metcalf welcomes applications in

- Pop cultural / literary representations of US prison and street gang culture

- The US Prison Industrial Complex / US Prison Education & Arts in Prison

- Reader / audience reception studies

Completed PhDs

- Representation of the girl gang and gang girl in films since 1980s

- Post 9/11 YA fiction

- Surveillance, State Violence & Resistance

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