There are more than 1.7 million people incarcerated in the United States, the majority of whom are poor and without legal representation. A growing number of educators, sociologists and artists are working to humanize the prison experience for this burgeoning underclass. Award-winning author John Edgar Wideman will share how prison has impacted his life in a keynote address at DePaul University on Oct. 6, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Cortelyou Commons, 2324 N. Fremont St.

Wideman’s speech opens a two-day conference “Locked Away: Critiquing the U.S. Prison System Through Story and Text,” sponsored by the DePaul University Humanities Center. The conference, aimed at examining the role of the humanities in the penal system, is free and open to the public.

A series of panel discussions on Oct. 7, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., will address topics such as “Literary and Film Representation of Incarceration” and “Humanizing Prisons and Jails: Models and Challenges.” Michael Eric Dyson, DePaul’s Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor and author of “I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr.,” will provide a conference wrap-up. Reservations are required for the Oct. 7 events and must be made by Oct. 4.

“The humanities speak to contemporary problems and issues,” said Jacqueline Taylor, director of the humanities center. “When we deal with the U.S. prison system, we deal with storytelling, philosophy and economics. It cuts across boundaries. The stories that are told and who gets to tell these stories becomes very important in shaping policy decisions.”

Wideman, a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, is the only two-time winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction for his novels “Sent for You Yesterday” (1984) and “Philadelphia Fire” (1990). Regarded for his intricate literary style detailing the experiences of Black men in urban America, Wideman’s memoirs “Brothers and Keepers” (1976) deal with his struggle to come to terms with his brother Robby’s murder conviction and life sentence (the victim was killed by Robby’s partner in a robbery). A second round of painful, real-life drama struck Wideman in 1986 when his 16-year-old son stabbed and killed a classmate.

Family tragedy aside, Wideman’s own journey has proved exceptional. Born in Pittsburgh to a working class family, he excelled as a scholar and basketball player at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1963. He became the second Black American to receive a Rhodes scholarship to the University of Oxford.

Wideman taught at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Wyoming before settling at Massachusetts in 1985. His published works include: “A Glance Away,” “Hurry Home,” “The Lynchers,” “Homewood Trilogy,” “Hiding Place,” “Damballah,” “Fever,” “The Stories of John Edgar Wideman,” and the non-fiction tome “Fatheralong: A Meditation on Fathers and Sons, Race and Society.” His latest novel, “The Cattle Killing,” is set in Philadelphia during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 and traces the paths of Blacks who helped nurse the disease’s victims only to blamed for the plague and massacred later.

The conference opens on Saturday with a 9 a.m. session on “Literary and Film Representations of Incarceration.” Speakers are: Michael Kackman, assistant professor of communication, DePaul; and Bell Gale Chevigny, professor emeritus of literature, Purchase College, SUNY. The second session, “Humanizing Prisons and Jails? Models and Challenges, Part I” opens at 10:45 a.m. Panelists are: Pilar Anadon, director of the Prison Creative Arts Project in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Cheryl Graves, of the Children and Family Justice Center of Northwestern University Legal Clinic and a founder of “Girl Talk,” a youth-based justice initiative; Tsehaye Herbert, coordinator of the Women Writers Workshop of Cook County Jail; Chiara Liberatore, the youth development coordinator of the Music Theatre Workshop in Chicago; and Ora Schub, a lawyers’ supervisor for the Children and Family Justice Center of Northwestern University Legal Clinic and coordinator of “Girl Talk,” a youth-based justice initiative. Ann Stanford, associate professor, DePaul’s School for New Learning, will moderate the session.

Lunch will be held from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Complimentary box lunches will be served. The afternoon program opens with Part II of the session on humanizing prisons and jails. Panelists are: Joanne Archibald, advocacy project director at the Chicago Legal Aid to Incarcerated Mothers; Bell Gale Chevigny; Sr. Mary Kay Flanigan, of the 8th Day Center for Justice; and Ann Stanford.

The wrap-up session begins at 3:30 p.m. with remarks by Dyson.

To make reservations for the Saturday session of the conference, call 773/325-4580 or send e-mail to Alecia Person at aperson@wppost.depaul.edu. Discounted visitor parking will be available at the Sheffield parking garage, 2335 N. Sheffield Ave. For more information, visit the DePaul Humanities Center Web site at www.depaul.edu/~humctr.