Middletown Studies Research

Author: middletownstudies

  • QRIG: Darius Scott, Normalized Alterity
    March 22, 2024 by

    On March 21, 2024, Darius Scott of McGill University presented a talk entitled “Normalized Alterity: Visualizing Black Spatial Humanities” to the Center’s Qualitative Research Interest Group.  Scott recounted his work on a project that animated aspects of Black spatial experience contained oral histories of life in rural Orange County, North Carolina.  Contact the Center for […]

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  • Community Talk: Hillbilly Highway: Jamestown, Muncie, and the Story of Another Great Migration
    February 19, 2024 by

    Location: Maring Hunt Library, 2005 S. High St, Muncie Time: 5:30-6:30 pm Date: Feb 23, 2024 Max Fraser will speak about the importance of the mid-twentieth-century migration from the South to industrial cities such as Muncie.  Fraser’s new book, Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class, traces the movement […]

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  • Embedded Education: Some Anthropological Observations on Homeschooling in Muncie
    February 23, 2023 by

    Dr. Debbie Shang, Associate Professor of Anthropology, and Visiting Scholar at the Center for Middletown Studies, will discuss her research on local homeschooling practices on Feburary 28, 3:30 PM, in Burkhardt Room 222. Shang will discuss the ways in which homeschooling is disembedded from school space but deeply embedded in the local community. Homeschooling in […]

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  • Fall, 2022 Updates
    November 28, 2022 by

    We’ve had a busy fall term at the Center.  A few updates: Support Student Research!  The Center, which has a long history of supporting hands-on student research experiences, is now raising funds to support those efforts.  Learn more here. Deep Mapping Middletown.  We completed the project’s initial brainstorming workshop in September with support from the […]

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  • Deep Mapping Middletown Workshop
    August 1, 2022 by

    The Center and the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA) Lab will host a workshop devoted to the Deep Mapping Middletown project. The aim is to devise a framework for a set of “deep maps” on Muncie derived from the extensive archive of research materials generated through research on the city as “Middletown.” Deep maps […]

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  • Dwight Hoover
    July 11, 2022 by

    Dwight Hoover, the founding Director of the Center for Middletown Studies, passed away last week at the age of 95.  He served as Director of the Center from 1983 until 1991, when he retired from Ball State.  Dwight published widely over the course of his career on subjects ranging from Black History to his early […]

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  • Spring, 2022 Updates
    May 10, 2022 by

    Another semester is in the books and we have a few exciting developments to report: First and foremost, the Center welcomes Dr. Jennifer Erickson as its new Assistant Director.  Jen is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Ball State.  You can read more about her here and here.  She is the author of Race-ing Fargo: Refugees, […]

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  • Vulnerable Communities is Published!
    March 9, 2022 by

      Cornell University Press has published Vulnerable Communities: Research, Policy, and Practice in Small Cities.  The book draws together scholars from a broad range of disciplines to consider the present condition and future prospects of smaller American cities.  It argues that struggling smaller cities in the U.S. face a distinctive mix of challenges and opportunities […]

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  • An Everyday Update
    October 20, 2021 by

    Work related to Everyday Life in Middletown continues on a few fronts.  First, and most important, we’ve scheduled our next Diary Day for Friday, October 22, 2021.  It represents the third set of contributions collected during 2021 (two diaries and a directive).  Look for one more Diary Day before the end of the calendar year. […]

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  • A Few Summer 2021 Highlights
    August 31, 2021 by

    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 […]

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