Guns and Society

This course examines the changing place of guns in U.S. society, from the colonial era through to the present day. Readings and discussions consider guns both as material objects involved in specific ways of life and as symbols and sites of contested meaning in American culture. Projects explore how guns have been, and remain, intimately involved with questions of race, gender, class, labor, capital, war, resistance, repression, vigilantism and ideas of freedom and self-defense. Special emphasis is placed on student research in local archives and museums in the Connecticut River Valley, the nation’s historical gun manufacturing center.

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Visualizing the Past: Contesting Space with Digital Mapping

This course gave students the skills to challenge common narratives and reconceptualize spaces through the practice of digital mapping. Students surveyed the latest in spatial and digital scholarship while also learning how to produce community-engaged mapping projects. This course addressed foundational questions and themes in public humanities related to recovery, repair, co-creation, and community engagement. Course work included reviewing existing digital projects, identifying community partners for a collaborative mapping project, learning data and mapping methods, and exhibiting a mapping project.

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Carceral Connecticut

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In the 1970s, during nationwide "urban renewal" or Redevelopment, the city of Middletown demolished an entire African American neighborhood to make parking lots and Route 9 on-ramps. Called the South End, this neighborhood had been Middletown's Black business and community center for decades.

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