Tanya Erzen

Tanya Erzen directs the Crime, Law, & Justice Studies minor and the B.A. in Liberal Studies program for Puget Sound students at the Washington Correction Center for Women with the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound (FEPPS). In 2023, she was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Grant to write a book entitled Runaways, Delinquents and Unruly Girls: The Long History of Imprisoning Girls 1910 to the Present. The project is also part of a collaboration with Puget Sound students inside and outside the prison to build a digital archive of gender and incarceration in Washington.

In 2022 and 2021, Erzen was awarded a Mellon Foundation-funded "Revitalizing the Humanities in the Pacific Northwest" grant for the archive project. With an ACLS Sustaining Public Engagement Grant, she collaborates with FEPPS alumni and professors on a project about Freedom and the Afterlives of Long Prison Sentences. She has been a Soros Justice Media fellow and a Hedgebrook Writer-in-Residence. She has also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, American Association of University Women and the Social Science Research Council.

Professor Erzen is the author of God in Captivity: The Rise of Faith-Based Ministries in an Age of Mass Incarceration, (Beacon Press, 2017); Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement (California, 2006), which received the Ruth Benedict Prize and the Gustave O Arlt award; Fanpire: The Religion of Twilight (Beacon Press, 2012); and co-editor of Zero Tolerance: Quality of Life and the New Police Brutality in New York City (NYU, 2001).

She is the Faculty Director and one of the founders of the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound, an organization that provides college classes to women in Washington prisons and seeks to educate the public about educational access and incarceration. FEPPS is a Signature Initiative of the University of Puget Sound. In 2020, FEPPS received support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a BA program at the Washington Corrections Center for Women. The first cohort of BA students will graduate in June 2024.
 

Selected Media on Prof. Erzen’s research

• CSPAN "God in Captivity: Interview with Tanya Erzen"
• KUOW Interview about Faith-Based Groups in Prison
• TEDx on Prisons and Higher Education
• NPR Fresh Air Interview about Straight to Jesus

Selected Media on FEPPS and Crime, Law and Justice

• White House Invites FEPPS and University of Puget Sound to Criminal Justice Panel
• Arches Magazine, "Breaking Down the Walls: Lessons From Freedom Education Project Puget Sound"
• South Sound Magazine, “Trapped Bodies, Freed Minds”
• Seattle Times, "Joy, tears as 19 Washington prison inmates earn college degrees"
• Seattle Times, "Behind bars, college is back in session in some Washington prisons"
• King 5 "Program helps women earn college degrees behind bars"
• "Collins Memorial Library Prepares to Meet Needs of Student-Prisoners in FEPPS Program"
• “UPS Ethics Bowl Competes in First Ever Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl at WCCW"