Prof. Linda Mizejewski and three former OPEEP campus students presented a panel at the national conference of The Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Drug Misuse Prevention and Recovery in Columbus OH, Oct. 22, 2025. Their session, “Teaching Addiction Studies in the Humanities and in a Prison Program,” focused on their experiences in WGSS 2326 Feminist Perspectives on Addiction, which was offered in Autumn 2024 at the Ohio Reformatory for Women.
Pitched to a conference audience of educators, the panel aimed to encourage feminist interdisciplinary courses on addiction and to emphasize the importance of addiction courses in prison education programs. Giving an example of a feminist interdisciplinary approach, Prof. Mizejewski described the unit on addiction and reproduction, which included an ethnography of pregnant women struggling with drug addiction, a report on the criminalization of such women, a New York Times feature on pregnant drug users facing systemic problems, and a discursive study of how the media constructed “crack mothers” in the 1980s.
Elena Navin and Emma Richter, who took the course as undergraduates, spoke about addiction problems within the prison system and the impact of being classmates with incarcerated women who shared their experiences with substance abuse. “My classmates' resilience was inspiring,” said Navin, “and if it were possible, I would still be taking classes with them today.” “The experience of this course has been truly life-changing and has ignited a passion for advocacy and change within me,” said Richter.
Sam Risak, a graduate student who took the course as a teaching apprenticeship, talked about how the OPEEP class shattered the traditional boundaries between academia and “the real world.” She also noted that the class made everyone “vulnerable in our lack of experience” because everyone was “starting something new: the ORW women, me, my OSU peers, even Dr. M.”
The panel’s conference registration fees were covered by funding from the Ratner Teaching Award, which Prof. Mizejewski had won in 2024 for a proposal for the ORW course