2019 Research

For the 2019-2020 academic year, the Indiana Studies team has elected to focus on "The Secret/Lost History of Indiana".

Headed up by Associate Professor Rasul Mowatt, the team will research parts of Indiana's history that might be unknown even to people who have lived their entire lives in the Hoosier state.

Consider the words secret, lost, invisible. Secret can mean playful or shameful. Lost can mean misplaced or stolen. Invisible can mean vanished or overlooked. In truth, all of these meanings can be applied to the history of Indiana. So much here is missing and fragmented, forgotten and then the act of forgetting is erased, leaving only an uneasiness in its wake.

Consider Indiana itself. A flyover state, a hidden state, to many, an unseen state. Within the state, what is hidden, and what is buried willfully? What about places that are simply overlooked, or too remote to be seen? Someone is obviously seeing those places. There is much to uncover here.

Consider agency. If something is lost, by whom has it been lost? To whom does it remain lost? How did it get lost in the first place? Is something truly lost if we know we can reclaim it?