Community Effort, Legacy Impact
Alumna’s posthumously published work earns 2025 book award.
Regina (Gina) White Benedict, a 2009 Department of Sociology PhD alumna, passed away suddenly in the spring of 2021 but left behind a legacy that lifts voices from an often-unheralded segment of society. Her spirit, scholarship, and community dedication live on in her posthumously published book, Incarceration and Older Women: Giving Back Not Giving Up (Bristol University Press, 2023).
Published through the efforts of dedicated colleagues, her book earned the 2025 Division on Feminist Criminology/American Society of Criminology Book Award. The award committee cited that they were “very impressed with Benedict’s work, especially its rich methods and intersectional focus, and we see it as an outstanding contribution to feminist scholarship.”
Benedict was an assistant professor of criminal justice and coordinator of the Criminal Justice program at Maryville College in Maryville, Tennessee, before her passing.
The published book grew from her PhD dissertation. Lois Presser, Distinguished Professor of the Humanities, was Benedict’s graduate advisor in sociology. She teamed up with Beth Easterling, visiting associate professor of criminal justice at Roanoke College, to find a publisher, adapt Benedict’s original work to its specifications, and prepare the foreword and afterword.
The book is based on in-depth interviews with women in prison in Kentucky. Benedict was motivated to understand how people make meaning of their lives while living in captivity and had always intended to publish the dissertation as a book.
By Randall Brown