Susan Hyatt

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Invisible Indianapolis: Race, Heritage and Community Memory in the Circle City

Dr. Susan B. Hyatt has directed ethnographic research for a series of neighborhood-based studies on the eastside, near-Southside, and in the mid-north neighborhood of Mapleton-Fall Creek. The most prominent of these projects focused on the history of a multiethnic community on Indianapolis’ near southside that was largely erased in the 1970s by interstate highway construction.

Her current project, “Invisible Indianapolis,” undertaken jointly with Paul Mullins, will synthesize research that is currently scattered among several of Indianapolis’ neighborhoods to produce a single, coherent narrative of neighborhood connections and displacement. “Invisible Indianapolis” underscores the compelling stories of American life that remain unseen or misunderstood in our very midst; it is striving to develop public scholarship based on community interests; and it addresses how such histories can be reinvigorated to create new understandings of our past and shape a vision of our city’s collective future.

In 2010, the Indiana Campus Compact awarded Dr. Hyatt the Brian Hiltunen Award for the Outstanding Scholarship of Civic Engagement and in 2012 she received the Chancellor’s Faculty Award for Excellence in Civic Engagement. In 2016 she, along with her colleague Paul Mullins, were awarded the inaugural Charles R. Bantz Chancellor’s Community Fellowship for their project, “Invisible Indianapolis: Race, Heritage and Community Memory in the Circle City.”

Dr. Hyatt’s work to preserve the history of Indianapolis neighborhoods is another example of how IUPUI faculty are TRANSLATING RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE.

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