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Indy Toxic Heritage—Pollution, Place, and Power

Indianapolis Special Collections Room (ISCR) Program

Learn about the complex histories of environmental harm and injustice in Indianapolis, and how a community-curated exhibit sparks conversation about pollution’s hidden histories in public spaces.

Culture, History, and Society: Historic Indianapolis Metropolitan Area Connections—What are the implications of considering our histories and places of environmental harm as heritage? Indy Toxic Heritage blends storytelling, art making, and historical research to create an exhibit, crowd-sourced archive, and public conversations that recognize environmental damage and advocacy for justice as part of Indianapolis’s citywide heritage. Learn about Indy’s complex histories of environmental harm and injustice, and how a community-curated exhibit sparks conversation about pollution’s hidden histories in public spaces. Following the interactive presentation, attendees will be invited to view the Indy Toxic Heritage exhibit at the Central Library.  

Presented by: Dr. Elizabeth Kryder-Reid is Chancellor’s Professor of Anthropology and Museum Studies and Public Scholar of Cultural Heritage, and Director of the IUI Museum Studies Program at Indiana University, Indianapolis. Her multidisciplinary research explores the intersections of landscape, power, and memory and investigates how materiality is deployed in contesting social inequalities across gender, race, class, ethnicity, and religion. She has disseminated this research through peer-reviewed publications, exhibits, and digital history projects. Her research has focused on landscape history and the production of public memory in the Chesapeake, the Midwest, and the California missions (California Mission Landscapes: Race, Memory, and the Politics of Heritage, U. Minn. Press 2016). Her current research investigates toxic heritage and how places of environmental harm are mobilized and marginalized in formal and informal memory practices. As part of this research, she has investigated post-industrial sites in the US and UK and was a Fulbright Scholar in France in 2022, studying the toxic heritage of WWI. She is the co-editor, with Sarah May, of Toxic Heritage: Legacies, Futures, and Environmental Justice (Routledge, 2023, Open access). She was a Charles R. Bantz Community Fellow working with Dr. Laura Holzman on “Indy Toxic Heritage: Pollution, Place, and Power”, a community-collaborative project including a digital archive and traveling exhibit.

Location: This program will be held in person in the Indianapolis Special Collections Room (ISCR) on the 6th floor of Central Library.

Parking: Central Library has a parking garage available to visitors during their time there. See the parking garage pricing information. The garage can be accessed on Pennsylvania Street.

This in-person program is part of the Culture, History, and Society: Historic Indianapolis programs hosted by the Indianapolis Special Collections Room (ISCR) on the 6th floor of the Central Library.

Contact: Special Collections Librarian Montoya Barker

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