What: Summer fieldwork training in cultural resources, public history and cultural landscapes research

Where: Cherry Street Community Garden and Cherry Court Housing, Midtown Neighborhood, Milwaukee, WI

When: July 7 2023—August 11, 2023

Project Objectives

The Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures Field School is a nationally recognized award-winning project that combines place-based immersive learning with civic engagement. The focus of the 2023 Field School is to write urban histories that reflect the lived realities of people in Milwaukee’s marginalized and segregated neighborhoods. Using methods such as material culture and architectural documentation, history harvests, short and long form oral histories, community led walks, asset mapping, and spatial ethnography, we will document the geography, layout, and stories of everyday life. We will explore how residents remember, preserve, and pass down stories of place, environment, and ecology to the next generation and examine how researchers and scholars may be able to collaborate with local communities to archive and preserve these forms of knowledge. The Field School welcomes the participation of members of the community, and it is open to anyone who is interested and can make a full-time commitment (Mon-Fri 9am-4pm) for five weeks. Participants are eligible to receive academic credit (3-6 cr.).   

During the 5-week period, we will examine the following:

Current thinking on concepts such as “black ecologies” and “radical care.”

·       How to collect, index, analyze, and disseminate oral histories.

·       How to observe, map, and document everyday places.

·       How to conduct and analyze community led walks and history harvests. 

·       How to search the archives to find underrepresented stories.

·       How to curate community exhibits and community archives.

Contact :For more information email senA@uwm.edu

Website and other urls

Field School website: https://thefieldschool.weebly.com/

Field School Application: http://thefieldschool.weebly.com/application.html

Field School Story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDKZoe3nM4k

Podcast: https://wisconsinhumanities.org/episode-1/

Submitted by Arjit Sen