Hoosier Lifelines: Social and Environmental Change Along the Monon, 1847-2020

The curators, historians, and artists behind the Hoosier Lifelines exhibition will discuss their interdisciplinary efforts integrating art and history in an exploration of Indiana’s changing environment along the remains of the historic Monon Railroad, from the Ohio River’s banks to Lake Michigan’s dunes. Today, its trains gone and its tracks largely deserted, the Monon’s path serves as the foundation on which to build a new understanding of the interplay of landscapes, ecosystems, and communities across time and space.

Dr. Elizabeth Grennan Browning is a U.S. historian, whose environmental history research examines how Americans have thought about and engaged with environmental issues and built narratives around these experiences, particularly through the lenses of environmental health and social justice in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She joined Indiana University’s Environmental Resilience Institute as the Midwestern/Indiana community history fellow in 2018 after receiving her Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Davis. At ERI, her research has spanned a broad range of environmental histories, from the interconnected stories of urban renewal and Superfund remediation in East Chicago to Midwestern farmers’ decision-making regarding resilience practices. Throughout her ERI projects, she has worked to build public discussion about climate change through public history engagement.

Richard Koenig is the Genevieve U. Gilmore Professor of Art at Kalamazoo College. Born in 1960, Koenig studied photography and holds degrees from Pratt Institute and Indiana University. In the summer of 2010, he began working on a long-term documentary project called Contemporary Views Along the First Transcontinental Railroad, four articles on which were published between 2014 and 2019. In addition, a memoir piece was published in Railroad Heritage (2017) as well as one on New Mexico’s last active semaphores in Railroad History (2019). He’s currently working on an article on the railroads around Traverse City, Michigan.

This event is free.