Department of American Studies

Peper Rivers is a doctoral student in American Studies at Indiana University with research interests at the intersection of addiction, criminalization, and medicalization in both historical and contemporary contexts. Her work engages critical prison studies, the institutional histories of disability, court reform of the US prison system, public health and public safety discourses in the postwar period, and the history of juvenile justice.
   
Peper has been teaching and learning with students in prison since 2017. As a volunteer faculty member with the Indiana Women’s Prison Higher Education Program, she compiled archival research and assisted the incarcerated scholars in their book, Who Would Believe a Prisoner?: Indiana Women’s Carceral Institutions, 1848–1920 (New Press, 2023). She continues to work and teach with the Women’s College Partnership, a campus of Marian University located at Indiana Women’s Prison.