Projects
Select projects from the Rust Belt Humanities Lab
1
Rust Belt Symposium
A Regional symposium aimed at co-creating humanities ecosystems in the Rust Belt. The goal of this event is to create a space for those interested in the Rust Belt to make connections, learn about opportunities to collaborate, and explore public humanities initiatives.
2
Teaching the Rust Belt
We are currently editing a collection of essays titled Teaching the Rust Belt. The essays take up these critical questions: 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?
3
Rust Belt Institute
In Summer 2023, we welcomed 25 college and university educators from across the country to campus for a two-week National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute: “Reading, Writing, and Teaching the Rust Belt: Co-creating Regional Humanities Ecosystems.” The Institute emphasized the importance of regional storytelling in fostering a sense of place and an investment in rooted humanities practices.
4
MLA Pathways Humanities Workshops
This project consists of creating three, discrete opportunities for our student populations to interact and for the humanities leadership at each institution to work towards common goals: “Comics, Community, and Cleveland: Framing the Future at the West Side Market,” “Cleveland’s Lakefront Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” and “Natural Dye Workshop with Drift Lab (Rust Belt Fibershed).”
5
Superman's Cleveland: Lineage and Legacy
In Fall 2023, we hosted Superman’s Cleveland, a city-wide celebration of the heritage of Superman, the world’s first comic book superhero invented in 1938 in Glenville by two sons of Jewish immigrants, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
Scholars and comic book lovers joine interested Clevelanders in book discussions, comics-making workshops, live interviews with creators, and a rich lineup of programs exploring the lineage and legacy of Superman and Cleveland.
6
Rust Belt Studies
An online, open access journal, Rust Belt Studies uses the framework of the public and emplaced humanities and social sciences in order to define, explore, and map an understudied region: The Rust Belt. Because so much of the United States’ problems and promise converge on the Rust Belt, the journal aims to model ways to use the humanities to find new solutions, tell better stories, and empower teacher-scholars to imagine new models for fostering civic engagement within their rooted context.