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Application Deadline - This Land: A Feminist Ohio Field School

Activities: We start in Columbus by thinking about the settler logics of the land grant university on OSU’s campus, then travel to Greenville, Cincinnati, and the Wayne National Forest for hands-on learning about settler colonialism and its ongoing relation to crucial social and political issues affecting the area.

Cost: This field school includes full funding for student travel, meals, and lodging. Students can enroll in a one credit course for May term, but it is not required.

Capacity: 10 students

Possibility for student to enroll in 1 credit (not required)

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Description

Drs. Jennifer Suchland and Mary Thomas, both associate professors in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, will lead a feminist field school in Ohio in May 2020 to better understand where “we” are situated within the legacies and contemporary manifestations of settler colonialism in Ohio. This second Livable Futures Field School will take 10 undergraduate students around campus and then to Greenville, Cincinnati, and the Wayne National Forest, to consider the significance of settler colonialism for our everyday on this land and for our academic lives as feminist scholars and people in the world.  

Our learning will focus on site specific engagement to learn about and examine how the histories of contact between indigenous peoples and settlers are represented in public memorials and museums, how settler colonialism persisted through narratives of Ohio as a transit zone for escaped slaves during Antebellum times, and on how contemporary resource extraction continues the logics of settler colonial formations of land use today. 

Application Requirements

Applications to the field school should include:

  1. Application

  2. Resume/CV

  3. Personal Statement (350-500 words double spaced) that: 

    • Explains your interest in the field school.

    • Explains how your particular skills and/or expertise will benefit the larger group.

    • Explains how you think the field school relates to your personal, professional, and/or creative development.

Application Deadline: March 16, 2020

All applications should be emailed to Professor Mary Thomas (thomas.1672 [at] osu.edu) by March 16, 2020. You will receive an email notifying you that your application has been submitted. 

Timeline of Events

Week of March 9
Interviews

March 20
Notification 

March 27
Group Meeting

May 11-15
Field School


Our Ohio Field School will visit four sites over fives days, with three nights on the road:

Monday May 11 - Columbus, Ohio, OSU Archives and OSU Farm

Tuesday May 12 morning departure - Greenville, Ohio, The Greenville Treaty Line

The site of the signing of the “Treaty of Greene Ville” in 1795, which was a major turning point in the expansion of settler America, the displacement, forced removal, and death of indigenous people from the Northwest Territory, and the settling of Ohio by colonists. The treaty initiated what is called the Ohio trail of tears. 

Lodging overnight in Greenville

May 13 morning departure - Cincinnati, Ohio, The Ohio River. 

The Ohio River is significant in many ways, and Cincinnati is an important location along that river.  The Ohio River was once the border that marked the British-protected “Indian Country” (Ohio Territory) and which was undermined by the creation of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787.  With that ordinance, the pathway to statehood for Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Minnesota was created. That path both undermined indigenous claims to their land and ways of life (including water) and established the antebellum divide between slave and non-slave states. 

Lodging overnight in Cincinnati

May 14 Morning Departure - Wayne National Forest

The forest was federally created in 1934 and named after Anthony Wayne, a key figure in the American Revolution and the white settler incursion into the Northwest Territory. It is a site to consider the confluence of settler history (as with the creation of “public lands”) and contemporary battles over access and protection of land/forest, fracking, public health, and economic and racial justice. 

Lodging overnight in Athens or at state park lodge

May 15 afternoon departure for Columbus - Wayne National Forest

We will meet with someone from Keep Wayne Wild (link)

Return to Columbus by 6pm


Earlier Event: February 29
Latinx Movement Lab with LROD
Later Event: March 28
Sky and Stone, Magic and Medicine