What question did this study set out to answer?

The research aims to explore a mid-range reading method that connects traditional close reading and distant reading of prison narratives.

March 22, 2026Open Access

Prison Writer as Witness: Can DH Read for Social Justice?

Key Points

The research aims to explore a mid-range reading method that connects traditional close reading and distant reading of prison narratives.
Analyzed the largest digital archive of essays by incarcerated individuals.
Proposed a 'cellular' reading method that balances individual texts with broader witness testimony.
Examined how digital humanities facilitate understanding of social justice through these narratives.
The 'cellular' reading method enhances the credibility of individual testimonies by situating them within a larger context.
Digital humanities tools can amplify voices of incarcerated writers, promoting advocacy for social change.
The approach bridges traditional literary analysis with modern digital techniques, highlighting its potential for social justice work.

Abstract

Drawing from a largest and first fully-searchable digital archive of non-fiction essays by incarcerated people writing about their experience inside US prisons and jail, the article proposes that there exists a broad, well established, but underappreciated mid-range manner of reading that stands between traditional close reading and computer-aided distant reading of first-person witness testimony. This mid-range or “cellular” reading method attends both to the singularity of each text, and ventures widely enough to grasp that each text gains credence and expository authority as one among aggregates of witness testimony; it is, moreover, in facilitating such mid-range reading that DH can provide readers with the foundation for moving from secondary witness and into acting for social change.

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