andrew d. kaufman

Books Behind Bars

The story of this life-changing class is a featured in the acclaimed film by Chris Farina, Seats At The Table.

Books Behind Bars is an educational program in which university students meet with incarcerated youth and adults to explore questions of meaning, value, and social justice through life-changing conversations about Russian literature classics.

Participants discuss personally relevant topics ranging from family to death, and success to moral responsibility.

“When I walked into that building every Tuesday afternoon, I wasn't locked up. It's like for the next three hours I can live, I can be myself, I can open up, I can be me.”

incarcerated youth participant

These interactions become the catalyst for both groups to learn from one another and share their most intimate human stories, while at the same time forming powerful connections and challenging whatever stereotypes about the other group they may have entered the class with.

Correctional center students and university students come away transformed by this unique educational experience—moved by their discovery of the relevance of classical literature, inspired by the humanity in one another, and empowered to pursue lives of greater purpose and meaning.

In 2009 University of Virginia faculty member Andrew D. Kaufman founded “Books Behind Bars: Life, Literature, and Leadership,” a community-based literature course that takes his university students to a maximum security juvenile correctional center in Virginia. 

 Andrew Kaufman discussing Books Behind Bars on PBS webinar hosted by New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie 

Seats at the Table

SEATS AT THE TABLE is a feature documentary film which depicts Andrew Kaufman's Books Behind Bars class that brings together university students with students at a maximum-security juvenile correctional center through the study of classic works of Russian literature.

 Watch Seats at the Table on PBS.org

The film is also available for streaming on Docuseek2.
The film may also be purchased from Bullfrog Films.

Having run for thirteen years, Books Behind Bars has been featured on the Today Show, in The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Moscow Times, on Katie Couric, NPR, and Russian national television. Seats at the Table, a feature-length documentary about the program, has been shown at film festivals throughout the United States, in France, and the UK, and aired nationally on PBS from 2019-2021.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a 20-year-old college student or a 20-year-old resident of a correctional center. You know what it feels like to lose someone you love. You know what it feels like to struggle with family situations. You know what it feels like to try to search for your place in a world that doesn’t always make that easy.”

Andrew D. Kaufman
“Books Behind Bars is the ultimate example of service learning and learning through doing, one of the most brilliant and highly effective I’ve encountered.”

- Ken Bain, International Education Expert and Best-Selling
Author of Super Courses, and What the Best College Teachers Do.

“We are learning from the residents as much as they’re learning from us. They’re humans with hopes and fears and flaws and dreams just like me, but they’re behind bars.”

- University Student