NEH Summer Institute at Ursuline College "Reading, Writing, and Teaching the Rust Belt: Co-creating Regional Humanities Ecosystems"

Reading, Writing, and Teaching the Rust Belt: Co-Creating Regional Humanities Ecosystems

Join us for a two-week residential institute for higher education faculty members.

This National Endowment for the Humanities-funded project focuses on the importance of regional storytelling in fostering a sense of place. June 4 through June 18, 2023 at Ursuline College The Rust Belt Humanities Lab at Ursuline College works to tell the story of this region through the voices of its people. The Rust Belt is often overlooked as “flyover” country and part of a dead, industrial past. Through the act of storytelling, we’ll pull the Rust Belt into the dynamic present. With the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, we’ll host a 2- week summer seminar for 25 college-level educators who will create lesson plans suitable for use in undergraduate humanities courses. We’ll focus on the importance of regional storytelling in fostering a sense of place. Participants leave with new tools to equip their students to shape the future of the Rust Belt, identify and contribute to social solutions, and reimagine the role of the humanities within this sphere. 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.

Apply by March 3 at www.rustbeltlab.org and follow us on social media @RustBeltLab