August, 2021

And we’re back.  The Fall 2021 term has begun, so we’d like to update you on our summer work.  A few highlights:

At the end of the spring term, we wrapped up the NEH-funded Library Circulation Histories Workshop.  For Covid reasons, we had to reformat it, turning it from an in-person gathering to a virtual event.  Since we had participants from Europe and Australia, as well as North America meant that we had to run it as an asynchronous meeting.  We posted and discussed presentations over a period of two weeks.  The program featured 24 scholars and we had close to 100 registered users.  During the summer we convened follow up discussions online, both live and asynchronous.  We’re now preparing publication and a White Paper summarizing key findings and future prospects in this area of research.  This research will inform further work on the What Middletown Read project.

Our next volume of research on small cities is in press.  Cornell University Press will publish Vulnerable Communities: Research, Policy and Practice in Small Cities in late 2021 or early 2022. The book includes examines the experiences of smaller cities in the U.S., particularly those cities struggling in the context of industrial job loss and intensive globalization.

Everyday Life in Middletown continues, with a particular focus on the local experience of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Project Director Pat Collier and Jim Connolly will present a paper entitled “Time Shifts: Future Orientation in Pandemic Everyday Life” to the Using Mass Observation’s Covid-19 Collection Seminar in October.  The Seminar is sponsored by the Mass Observation Archive, Sussex (UK) University.  We expect to publish a version of the paper in a volume of the journal History of the Human Sciences.

Check back here for more details on the Center’s research in the weeks ahead.

JC