Lily Sheehan is Associate Professor in the Department of English, as well as Affiliated Faculty in the Department of Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies at OSU.
What prompted you to become an OPEEP instructor?
When I arrived at OSU a few years ago, OPEEP was one of the programs that was most exciting to me. I love teaching because education can enrich students' lives, enabling transformations and discoveries about themselves and the world—and it's fantastic that OPEEP makes that possible for incarcerated people. Plus, while doing OPEEP training, I met members of the LAM Collective and the degree cohort, and I was so impressed by their knowledge, expertise, and interest. I've repeatedly heard from colleagues who've taught through OPEEP that the classes have had some of the best students they've encountered at OSU.
What course will you be teaching for OPEEP?
ENG 3261 Fiction, Then and Now—Fashion. One of my areas of expertise is the relationship between fashion and literature, and this course focuses on their connections during the early twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries.
What takeaways would you like students to leave your class with?
Clothing and stories are fundamental and related means by which people experience the world and themselves. They are part of the fabric (metaphor intended) of our everyday lives and they help us understand how our experiences relate to broader systems and structures.
What is the one thing you wish more people knew about prison abolition and transformative justice?
Because carceral systems permeate US and global cultures, you're always in touch with them and thus you have more opportunities that you might think to try to resist them.
What do you like to do in your free time?
I have a 2-year-old, who is very active, funny, and curious and so I try to spend as much time with him as I can—along with my partner, friends, and family (near and far). He's getting more into imaginative play, so this morning I spent a lot of time talking to him and his favorite doll, Bunny, who wanted a lot of extra snuggles.