2019 Projects
In 2019, the Indiana Studies team chose the topic of "The Secret/Lost Histories of Indiana."
With focus on race, rural space, labor, methodology, the Midwest, and Imaginary Indiana, our scholars sought to uncover the unspoken histories of the state, bring them to light, and interrogate them from the viewpoints of various disciplines.
Shuttered/Shutter/Shudder
Joseph Varga
A photo and research project centering around closed factories in Southern Indiana, shuttered/shutter/shuddered explores the haunting of closed spaces, the effect the closures had on the labor force and the surrounding communities, and what moving forward looks likes for each of these communities.
Indiana's Prison for Women
Micol Seigel
In 2012, a group of women incarcerated at the IWP began to research the history of the institution
which has housed Indiana’s wayward women ever since (though IWP proper has moved from its original
site, and there are now three prisons for women in the state). With research assistance from nonincarcerated historians, these scholars began to look in to the history of the women whose portraits hung in the administrative wing’s vaulted hall. They began to unearth some fairly ugly secrets.
The Lost Histories Tour
Carissa Carman
The Lost Histories tour is a soundscape exploration, meant to be experienced while driving along Indiana Highway 46, from Bloomington to Columbus. A spin on a podcast, the soundscape offers imagined versions of what a listener might here on this drive, made up of real sounds and imagined conversations.
Ebb & Flow
Eric Sandweiss, Betsy Stirratt, & Tracy Templeton
Eric Sandweiss, Betsy Stirratt, and Tracy Templeton, for "Ebb & Flow," a photo and research project on the history of Indiana waterways, historic and present-day.