Part two of our three-part series focuses on the impact of the Humanities Prison Initiative, a project in the Creative Inquiry + Undergraduate Research (CI) program at Clemson. Celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2025, CI’s impact reaches 40% of Clemson’s living alumni body. Visit the program’s website for more information.
Brett Porter wasn’t sure what his Clemson experience would entail. He likely never dreamed it would include walking into Greenville County Detention Center alongside his college professor in September of his sophomore year.
“You’re not around people in orange jump suits very often,” he says, “so it can seem pretty intimidating at first.”
Porter’s anxiety subsided as Nancy Paxton-Wilson — who teaches in Clemson’s Department of Interdisciplinary Studies — took time to intentionally shake hands with each detainee and inmate who were meeting with them as part of a class. Their visit was through the Humanities Prison Initiative, a Creative Inquiry + Undergraduate Research (CI) project designed to support transformative prison education.
Paxton-Wilson brought the idea with her to Clemson from Georgia State University after tutoring at Phillips State Prison. What started as a small online class during the pandemic has now grown to a full-capacity group of 35 students from a variety of academic disciplines.
“Students come into the CI and have seen a bunch of Netflix films and documentaries about prisons, so they think they know what it’s like,” she says. “They quickly find out it’s not really like that at all.”
That’s been Porter’s experience as well. An English major from Massachusetts, he first joined the project on a whim because it sounded interesting. One year later, he’s on his own every Wednesday morning for several hours teaching a class in the mental health wing of the detention center. He reads Greek mythology and poetry from the collection of Dwayne Betts, who spent eight years in prison following a carjacking before earning his juris doctorate from Yale Law School after his release. Porter focuses on grammar, including sentence structure and subject-verb agreement. He ends with time for drawing.
Paxton-Wilson’s CI teaches at both Phillips and Greenville County, along with Perry Correctional Institution. She says the CI allows her students to pursue something that could be a passion — whether it’s in mental health, counseling or related fields. In addition to visits, the CI includes in-depth reflections, presentations and research papers.
Recently, Paxton-Wilson partnered with program alums and current students — including Porter — to establish a nonprofit supporting prison education known as the Restorative Scholars Initiative. It aims to empower incarcerated individuals in South Carolina to develop a deeper understanding of both themselves and the world through access to higher education.
Porter says everything connected through the CI has been the most meaningful thing he’s done at Clemson. “It’s led me down the path of what I want to do after college,” he admits. “I’ve added a legal studies minor and hope to go to law school right out of Clemson or gain experience as a paralegal. Having a genuine impact on people through this CI is pretty incredible.”