2:30 PM // Performance of A Tale of Two Cities

Post-Show Community Conversation in the Event Room – Second Floor

In this Community Conversation moderated by Emory Director of Ethics and the Arts, Laura Asherman, co-founder and Executive Director of El Refugio, Amilcar Valencia, and Emory professor and co-founder of the nonprofit Common Good Atlanta, Sarah Higinbotham, will delve into issues facing incarcerated people in Georgia in connection to the play. Both speakers do work in criminal justice reform with a particular focus on maintaining the dignity of incarcerated or detained people as they encounter the criminal justice or deportation system.

Presented in partnership with the Center for Ethics at Emory University and the Emory Public Humanities Graduate Course. Community Conversation discussions are free for ticket holders. No RSVP required.

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Amilcar Valencia, Executive Director El Refugio

Amilcar Valencia is a co-founder and Executive Director of El Refugio. Through his work, he is making the affected community visible, elevating their voices, accompanying them in their struggles, and supporting their efforts to end the inhumane and unnecessary detention and deportation system. In 2019, Amilcar was named one of Georgia’s 50 Most Influential Latinos by the Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. He is a member of the steering committee of Georgia Detention Watch and serves as a board member for Detention Watch Network (DWN).

Sarah Higinbotham, Assistant Professor of English Oxford College of Emory

Sarah Higinbotham studies and teaches Shakespeare and early modern literature, focusing on the intersections of literature and law. She writes about the violence of the law in early modern England, critical prison theory, and human rights in literature. Higinbotham also works with students who are interested in criminal justice reform, facilitates undergraduate peer tutoring in Georgia’s prisons, and oversees summer internships.

While earning a PhD in English, Higinbotham taught college courses inside a Georgia State Prison. In 2014, she co-founded a nonprofit (Common Good Atlanta) that connects universities with prisons, work that is rooted in the belief that human dignity flourishes, and communities become stronger, when access to higher education is equitable. Common Good Atlanta offers accredited college courses in six Georgia prisons, five days a week. Before joining the Oxford faculty in 2017, Higinbotham taught Shakespeare and Milton at Georgia Tech for three years as a Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow.

Learn more about A Tale of Two Cities.