This course will teach students about restorative justice, reconciliation, and atonement.  We will explore questions of why and how artistic activity can begin and/or support processes of reconciliation for people who have committed crimes and for crime victims.  Students in this class will facilitate weekly arts workshops in adult prisons and community venues where former prisoners, crime victims, and the families of those groups can gather together.  Focusing on the themes of acknowledgement, apology, and atonement, the workshops will produce original performances, creative writing, and visual art presented at the end of the semester by both the student facilitators and the members of the workshop.  Students and workshop participants who give their consent can contribute their work to the Atonement Project website - an online forum designed by the MIT Media Lab - as a means of starting conversations about atonement with web users.  Ultimately this course seeks to identify the best strategies for using the arts to address crime and those most affected by it.