Jim Connolly, Co-Director of EDLM (and director of the Center for Middletown Studies), will give a talk about the project and the book he and EDLM Director Pat Collier are writing about it. It takes place Monday March 31, 2025 at 6 pm at Muncie Public Library’s Kennedy Library branch. Come if you can. Here’s the blurb:
Since early 2016, a shifting group of people who live and work in Muncie have been periodically recording and sharing accounts of their daily lives as part of the Everyday Life in Middletown (EDLM) project. James Connolly, Director of the Center for Middletown Studies and a Co-Director of EDLM along with Patrick Collier, will provide an update on the project and discuss some of the insights it has generated. Connolly and Collier are collaborating on a book based on these submissions, which include more than 700 written contributions as well as photos, video, and drawings. The project documents a period of sharp upheaval in American life that has included a pandemic and intense political conflict. It also explores the ongoing struggles of Muncie’s residents to come to grips with their city’s postindustrial character. Connolly’s talk will trace some of the ways that EDLM’s contributors have described their day-to-day experiences and consider what these accounts can tell us about recent and contemporary life in Muncie, the Rust Belt, and the United States.
The talk is sponsored by the Muncie Public Library, the Center for Middletown Studies, and the Ball State University History Department.
Contact us at edlmiddletown@gmail.com