Fifteenth International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

This session tells the story of how three faculty members at a community college came together to create an institutional educational framework that merges the museum with the classroom, while emphasizing the concept of storytelling as a sociopolitical way to take ownership of “place”. In 2017, Lewis and Clark Community College faculty worked with the State Superintendent of the Lewis and Clark State Historic Site to create a two-year honors education program where the classroom became a web of local museums. The stories at each museum became “the professor”, and the students were encouraged to tell their own “river story” as a way to connect to physical place, social space, and develop agency through storytelling. This is a reimagining of “the museum” as a single place, and rethinking how students can be involved in the storytelling of space by adding their own chapters to the larger narrative. “Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Presenters

Jen Cline
Associate Professor/Honors College Coordinator, Sociology, Lewis and Clark Community College, Illinois, United States

Brad Winn
Adjunct Faculty, Liberal Arts, Lewis and Clark Community Colelge, Illinois, United States

Peter Hussey
Professor of Music/Percussion, Honors College Assistant Coordinator, Music, Honors College, Lewis & Clark Community College, Honors College, Illinois, United States