Leanne Trapedo Sims
Daniel J. Logan Professor of Peace and Justice; Chair of Peace and Justice
Meet Professor Sims
Years at Knox: 2021 to present
Leanne Trapedo Sims was born in Johannesburg, South Africa: Apartheid was the early ferment for her political and social commitments. She is the Daniel J. Logan Associate Professor of Peace and Justice and Chair at Knox College. From 2012-2016, Leanne Trapedo Sims conducted trans-disciplinary research as a feminist ethnographer at the sole women’s prison in Hawai‘i—Women’s Correctional Community Center.
Her book—Reckoning with Restorative Justice: Hawai‘i Women’s Prison Writing—was published with Duke University Press, 2023. Her work interrogates the intersections of gender, Indigeneity, violence and state power in colonized Hawai‘i.
Trapedo Sims is active in prison activism/education and coalition building. At Knox College, she is shaping a new, interdisciplinary program in Peace and Justice with a focus on critical carceral studies and abolition. She is director of the Prison Education program with the nearby Henry Hill Correctional Center and is building an Inside-Out-style Prison Exchange program with Hill. She has dreams to establish a Restorative Justice Laboratory at Knox College. She envisions the Lab as an incubator for local activists, artists, advocates, impacted families, and the inside community to address reparative justice and mass incarceration in the Galesburg and Chicago areas.
Her work has appeared in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Autumn 2020, and in Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies 2018 special issue, “Mapping Gendered Violence: Contemplating Conflict and Crisis in Contemporary Societal Struggles.”
"Knox College was attractive to me for the promise of vital community work. As an activist in a plethora of communities, I am indebted to the power of people to effect systemic and systematic change: a transformation that is urgent at this time. I additionally believe in the power of a liberal arts education to augment critical thought.
"Outside of my academic interests, I am inspired by poetry, dance, and theater, which I have engaged in since childhood—that is multiple decades! I have traveled extensively across the globe. I spent a glorious summer in Kyoto, Japan training with master teachers of the Wakayagi school of nihonbuyo classical dance and performed a nihonbuyo recital on the Oe Noh Stage.
"Living in Hawai‘i indelibly changed me—I was blessed to be immersed in Indigenous ways of looking at the world which altered my academic and personal trajectories.”
Teaching Interests
My teaching interests are interdisciplinary and intersectional—informed by my training across the Humanities, Liberal Arts, and Social Sciences. Some of them are: peace and justice studies; critical prison studies; feminist ethnography; social and racial justice; trauma studies; life writing; and queer Indigeneities.
Education
Ph.D., American Studies, 2017, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
M.A., Education, 2006, Fordham University
M.A., Performance Studies, 1997, New York University
M.A., Creative Writing and Literary Studies, 1991, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
B.A., English, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Selected Professional Accomplishments
Honors/Awards
Inside & Out: The Humanities and Mass Incarceration, University of Chicago, March 2024. Invited Community Partner for a National convening of the Council on Humanities
Bard Prison Initiative Summer Residency, Bard College, 2023
https://bpi.bard.edu/bpi-holds-fifth-annual-summer-residency/
Envisioning Justice grant from Illinois Humanities $8,000, 2023
Envisioning Justice grant from Illinois Humanities $11,550, 2022
Envisioning Justice grant from Illinois Humanities $6,000, 2021
Nominee for National Women’s Studies Association/University of Illinois Press First Book Prize, 2018
American Dissertation Fellowship. American Association of University Women (AAUW), National branch $20,000, 2016
College of Arts and Humanities Dissertation Research Award. University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, American Studies department $10,000, 2015
Creative Nonfiction prize winner, Ian MacMillan Writing Contest, 2015
Walls to Bridges (Canadian counterpart to Inside Out) Prison Facilitator Training Program, 2015
AAUW- Honolulu Branch Postgraduate Scholarship $6,000, 2014
American Studies Academic Achievement Award $5,000, 2014
College of Arts and Humanities Dissertation Research Award. University of Hawai‘i $5,000, 2014
Glen Grant Endowed Scholarship Award, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, 2013
Publications & Projects
Book (peer review)
Reckoning with Restorative Justice: Hawai‘i Women’s Prison Writing. Duke University Press, 2023.
https://twitter.com/DukePress/status/1686792322971803648
Literary Zine:
Reflections Across Borders: Henry Hill and Knox College in Conversation, 2023
Journal Articles (peer review)
“Reimagining Home: Redemption and Resistance in Hawai‘i Women’s Prison Writing.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Volume 46, Issue 1 (Fall 2020). https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/709244
“Love Letters: Performative and Biological Families.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies. Mapping Gendered Violence: Contemplating Conflict and Crisis in Contemporary Societal Struggles special issue (Summer 2018).
“Dalia Carmel: A Menu of Food Memories.” Pilaf, Pozole and Pad Thai: American Women and Ethnic Food. Ed. Sherrie A Inness. University of Massachusetts Press, 2001.
Creative Nonfiction
“The Culinary of Flesh: Kizkalesi Beach.” Hawai‘i Review, December 2015. Issue 83: Literature of Crime, 2015.
“Love Letters.” Winner of the 2015 Ian MacMillan Writing Contest, Creative Nonfiction. Hawai‘i Review, May 2015.
Poetry:
“Exilic Landscape or the body in rapture.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies. Mapping Gendered Violence: Contemplating Conflict and Crisis in Contemporary Societal Struggles special issue (Summer 2018).
“Eva Braun.” TinFish Literary Journal. Honolulu, 2007
“Sin of skin.” Anamesa: The Culture Issue, New York University: Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Fall 2003.
“Pox on your tongue, gangrene in your eyes, or possibly, May you rot till the skunks run from your smell,” and “Old Country.” Bridges Literary Journal, 2003.
“Caribou Hunters,” exhibited at PS1 Contemporary Art Center, as part of the Special Writers Project Series: Writers Talk Back to Contemporary Artists, 2000.
Professional Memberships
- American Studies Association
- Peace and Justice Studies Association
- National Women’s Studies Association
- European Forum for Restorative Justice
- National Coalition for Higher Education in Prison–NCHEP
- Illinois Coalition for Higher Education in Prison–IL-CHEP
- International Institute on Peace Education