“Calls From Home Screening and Discussion with Sylvia Ryerson, Elizabeth Hinton, and Matthew Jacobson” (Public Humanities at Yale)

Join us for a special film screening and discussion of Calls From Home, a 2023 short film directed by Sylvia Ryerson, a Yale PhD student in American Studies. Ryerson will be in conversation with Matthew Jacobson (co-director of the Yale Public Humanities Program and the Sterling Professor of American Studies, History & African American Studies at Yale) and Elizabeth Hinton (Professor of History, African American Studies & Law at Yale).

 

Film description: A longstanding radio program sends familial messages of love to people incarcerated in Central Appalachia. Directed by Sylvia Ryerson, a former DJ for the show, Calls From Home follows the weekly broadcast through prison walls, portraying the many forms of distance that rural prison building creates—and the ceaseless work to end the racist system of mass incarceration and family separation.

 

This event will be in-person only at the New Haven Free Public Library (Ives Library, 133 Elm Street) but will be recorded and published on Yale Public Humanities’ YouTube channel. This program is presented as part of the ongoing “Democracy in America” series, a collaboration between the New Haven Free Public Library and Public Humanities at Yale.