Andrew Bilodeau is a senior at Yale University majoring in History. His primary interest is the transformation of carceral systems in the United States of America – as well as abolition and reform movements in response to such developments. While his research mainly focuses on manifestations of criminalization and incarceration during the 20th century, he also maintains a substantial interest in the pre- and post-bellum iterations of the prison industrial complex. He plans to pursue a career in researching and teaching about abolition movements and the carceral state.
His senior thesis centers on a series of uprisings at Connecticut’s Wethersfield State Penitentiary in the late 1950s. It builds on a previous project on the same prison earlier in the decade, which can be found in the undergraduate peer-reviewed Michigan Journal of History. He hopes this project is the first of many highlighting the several dozen often-overlooked prison rebellions of the 1950s.
Bilodeau has been recognized for scholarship on criminalization outside the United States, earning the Canadian Studies Prize from Yale University in recognition of his work on Italian internment in Canada during World War II. This manuscript was recently published in the undergraduate peer-reviewed James Blair Historical Review.
In addition to his interest in carceral studies, Bilodeau also regularly engages with late-19th century labor history. This includes a piece recounting the trials and resistance of California farmworkers near Los Angeles at the turn of the 20th century. The article was published in the 2021 edition of the Crimson Historical Review. He also has a forthcoming article on Black union organizers during the Tennessee Coal Creek War, which is being prepared for publication by the Yale Historical Review for its 1701 Project, which is centered on histories of race and racism.
He was also recently appointed an Archival Research Associate for RadX, a study through the Yale School of Medicine examining public health trends and history in American jails and prisons. In this role, Andrew will work with archival materials to contextualize current vaccination trends by analyzing Connecticut’s historical healthcare policies in addition to resistance movements from people experiencing incarceration. RadX is a unique project in that it incorporates public health experts, historians, social workers, and formerly incarcerated people to tell a full story about health and incarceration and inform future policies.
Outside of his research, Bilodeau has engaged substantially with the Yale and New Haven communities during his undergraduate career. He has published and edited several non-academic articles in the Yale Human Rights Journal, where he served as a managing editor. He previously worked with the Yale Hunger and Homelessness Action Project to design an outreach program that sent students to service organizations throughout New Haven to converse with and gather the concerns of people experiencing house and food insecurity. In conjunction with Yale’s career center, Bilodeau has planned events and conducted panels featuring academic and nonprofit leaders aimed at students interested in “Common Good and Creative Careers.” Currently, Bilodeau helps develop and deliver sexual violence prevention programming at Yale University as a Communication and Consent Educator.