The City and the Senses: Reflections on Teaching Urban Anthropology During the Pandemic

In Spring 2021, I taught Urban Anthropology entirely online. In lieu of the interviews, participant-observation, and neighborhood tours I normally would have included in the syllabus, I asked students to carry out a series of visual exercises in their local neighborhoods to document what it was like to live through the lockdown period of the pandemic. In retrospect, I have begun to think about how utilizing a multi-sensory approach to ethnography during this time might have produced even richer insights about urban life.  In this commentary, I consider how while focusing on one sense, the visual, still allowed us to create an excellent snapshot of life in Indianapolis during the lockdown, utilizing more of our senses in representing local neighborhoods would have encouraged us to think even more deeply about how cities, like all human environments, are always in flux and responding at any given moment to a wide range of pressures, constraints, and opportunities.&nbsp

Transformative Learning for Our Students When They Go Behind Prison Walls

poster abstractThe Inside-Out Prison Exchange allows students and others outside of prison to go behind the walls to reconsider what they have learned about crime and justice, while those on the inside are encouraged to place their life experiences in a larger framework. In the groups’ discussions, countless life lessons and realizations surface about how we as human beings operate in the world, beyond the myths and stereotypes that imprison us all. The program demonstrates the potential for dynamic collaborations between institutions of higher learning and correctional institutions

NAPTOWN RISES: HAS A SPORTS STRATEGY REAWAKENED A SLEEPING CITY?

poster abstractDowntown Indianapolis is witnessing a dramatic resurgence. For Indian-apolis, a chance to host the 2012 Super Bowl is not only an honor, but an opportunity to rebrand itself as a “big league city” with Midwestern charm. From the building of Lucas Oil Stadium, to the expansion of the existing con-vention center and the recently completed Georgia Street corridor, to subsi-dizing the building of a soaring hotel, Indianapolis has bent itself backwards to be ‘cool’ and ‘sporty.’ Few neighborhoods boast the development that has become common downtown. This dependency on sports as a means for eco-nomic development blurs the distinction between public and private space. For our research, we target the “mile-square” as ground-zero for analyzing and observing how a sport strategy has transformed the once called “India-no-place” to “Super City.” We collected a considerable amount of information through literature reviews, site visits, mapping (ArcGIS), field trips, and in-terviews. In this poster presentation, we study how the vernacular landscape of Indianapolis has changed due to the reliance on sports as an economic development strategy. We also discuss the role of public-private partner-ships in the making of downtown development as well as the development of districts to appeal to the new ‘creative’ class. We hope that our presentation will shed light on the complex relationship between recent events and down-town redevelopment

Black Lives Matter and the Public Rediscovery of Structural Racism

Asset-Based Community Development promises to empower local communities while failing to address racialized disparities. We must look to broad-based social movements such as Black Lives Matter if we wish to create a genuinely more equitable and anti-racist worl

Research Partnerships: Undertaking and Understanding Collaborative Ethnography in Indianapolis

poster abstractStudents will present a range of collaborative research projects they have undertaken in consultation with neighborhood and community-based organizations in Indianapolis. They will address the benefits, challenges and limitations that collaborative research has posed for them, as ethnographers-in-trainin