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Re-visioning identities and communities: A performance ethnography with women in prison.
Susan Arai and Amber Zimmerman are currently engaged in a performance ethnography to explore community reintegration through performance with women in federal prison.  Performance ethnography engages ethnographic fieldwork with performance praxis and embodies experiences of women in federal prison within a collective exploration of change processes around community reintegration. This study examines identity and difference, power, oppression and agency, autonomy and freedom, risk, and hope as concepts central to community reintegration. Research questions include: How do the women, the audience and the researchers share the performative experience? What is made conscious and emotionally understood by the audience and the women? In the dialogical and relational process of performance how do the women, the audience, and the researchers negotiate identity and difference, power, oppression and agency, autonomy and freedom, risk, and hope? What does performance as a method mean when situated in the context of a women's prison? In the context of prison, what is the relationship between performance and identity and difference; power, oppression and agency; autonomy and freedom; risk; and hope? What are the "rhetorical problematics" of performance as they are translated into alternative forms of "publishing"? This performance ethnography creates space for personal and collective knowledge and change among the women and audience through the collective gift of remembering (Madison), holding of the impacts of social inequity and incarceration on the women's lives, and developing collective knowledge about possibilities for change. The research also contributes to knowledge about performance as an innovation in correctional programs and policy critique of correctional, welfare, and social development policies placing control for this conversation in the hands of the women and their audience through performance.

Assessment for the Re-integration into Community for Women (ARC-W)

Susan Arai and Karen Gallant are working with Community Justice Initiatives of Kitchener-Waterloo to develop an assessment tool for use with women leaving the Grand Valley Institution for women. The assessment captures insight around key issues affecting the women as they move from the prison to community including: self-esteem, stress, experiences of stigmatization, social support and the supports provided by Stride Circles. The Assessment for the Re-integration into Community for Women (ARC-W) is currently being pilot tested.

Examining Women's Social Inclusion After Federal Incarceration in Canada

Darla Fortune's doctoral research examines the nature of social inclusion in the lives of federally sentenced women who are reintegrating into the community after their release from prison. This study is designed as a feminist participatory action research (FPAR) project aimed at challenging elements of oppression, transforming power relations and promoting social change. It seeks to understand the nature of social inclusion from the participants' perspectives and involves participants in efforts to foster a more socially inclusive environment for women living in the community after incarceration.