Bart Elmore is a professor in the Department of History, as well as a core faculty member of the Sustainability Institute at OSU.
What prompted you to become an OPEEP instructor?
I had heard from other colleagues about the program, and I knew I wanted to be a part of it. When I was an undergraduate, I had served as intern to the Governor of Georgia, and on one occasion, he sent me to visit with incarcerated folks. I remember being struck then by how those spaces had a dehumanizing effect on people. In some sense, twenty years later, I’m returning to the prison environment I first encountered as a younger man, and I hope I can do some good for those who are seeking to gain an education at a tough time in their lives. I’m also wise enough now to know that I’ll be learning a lot from the people I meet at ORW, because that’s exactly what has happened in my OSU classrooms, where students are often co-creators of course content. I’m excited to see what knowledge we co-create!
What course will you be teaching for OPEEP?
Coca-Cola Globalization: American Business and Global Ecological Change. It’s my bread-and-butter environmental history course that helps students think about how we can learn from the past to live more sustainably on this planet. It allows us to see how corporations have reshaped ecosystems across the globe and how we might be able to influence corporate behavior in ways that could lead us toward a more eco-conscious economy. When I did the training for OPEEP, I remember hearing from incarcerated students that what they really wanted was for me to offer a course at the center of my expertise. So that is exactly what I am going to do.
What takeaways would you like students to leave your class with?
No matter where we find ourselves in life, we are in and of nature. Understanding our deep ecological roots as humans is something that should make us better stewards of the environments we inhabit. I hope that students will learn practical lessons from the past that can help them live more sustainably on this planet. I also hope they’ll learn techniques for holding businesses accountable for the pollution these enterprises cause and the harm they inflict on nature.
What is the one thing you wish more people knew about prison abolition and transformative justice?
Simply that there could be a much better way to think about crime and punishment in this country. I hope OSU students in this program come to see incarcerated people as individuals who have the full range of human desires, including the desire to engage in the same kind of curricular engagement that OSU students get to enjoy on a daily basis around the Oval. By teaching a course like environmental history which is not specifically about prison abolition, I hope students will see that intellectual spark and academic curiosity that still exists among people who are facing hardship in a prison system that in so many ways denies them the human dignity they deserve.
What do you like to do in your free time?
Explore the outdoors with bikes, kayaks, and backpacks. I recognize that this is a privilege denied many of the incarcerated students, so one thing I’m interested in exploring is what opportunities might exist to create more connection to nature within the prison system.