The Rust Belt Humanities Lab
at Ursuline College
What is the Rust Belt Humanities Lab?
For too long, the narrative of the Rust Belt has been one of emptiness, decay, decline, and vacancy — and often, our stories are neglected in the national sphere or controlled by cultural outsiders. Through the act of storytelling, we’ll pull the Rust Belt into the dynamic present. We emphasize the power of regionally-based storytelling and the importance of uplifting local voices. We think collectively about what it means to read, teach, and think from a rooted positionality.
We ask: how do we leverage civically and publicly engaged humanities practices to equip our students to shape the future of the Rust Belt, identify and contribute to social solutions, and to reimagine the role of the humanities within this sphere? How do we read, interpret, and create the texts that define and map our regional experience?
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Art by Sina Grace
Framing the Future
Recognizing the need for a sustained focus on regionally-specific, Rust Belt-centric humanities—an opportunity to invest in the civic fabric and infrastructure of our collective home—we drafted a mission statement: We aim for this to be the start of a larger effort to create a Rust Belt humanities hub—the only of its kind—telling our stories and imagining solutions from within this region, a metonym for the interconnected issues of class, race, justice, and education facing this country. Because so much of the United States’ problems and promise converge on the Rust Belt, our work can be a model for ways to use the humanities to find new solutions, tell better stories, and empower our students to imagine themselves as productive citizens within their rooted context.
Regional Humanities Infrastructure
Our institute is animated by the desire to leverage the public humanities to make positive, regional change.
We were energized and inspired by the work of defining the public humanities, led by the efforts of the National Humanities Alliance, who recognize five distinct categories of publicly-engaged scholarship: outreach, engaged public programming, engaged research, engaged teaching, and the infrastructure of engagement.
Our Rust Belt Humanities Lab has successfully created programming and outreach materials for a general audience—and always centers engaged teaching and research—our next step is an essential one in combatting the uncertain future and instability of the humanities both locally and nationally: building an infrastructure of engagement.
Join us in our lab's work to build a regional humanities ecosystem in the Rust Belt!