About the Project
In this fellowship, students engaged with cultural resources dotting the Vanderbilt campus landscape in order to develop design interventions that will make Vanderbilt’s recent history more legible to contemporary students, alumni, visitors, faculty, and staff. The students approached this project within the theme of “disorientation,” similar to an orientation, but with the aim to counter any cleanly linear narrative leading merely to progress and reconciliation. Mentors and fellows explored elements of the university’s past that have remain unresolved and then underwent the research needed to make better sense of enduring campus controversies. Through this project, students strengthened their research, communication, and collaboration skills; learned to perform cultural and historical analysis; engaged in ethical and reflective thinking; created design interventions; and learned how to apply these skills to their work at Vanderbilt and beyond. The fellows used their project to encourage the University to consider investing more time and resources into thoughtfully engaging with its past, helping to ensure that important, sometimes difficult aspects of its history are acknowledged and openly discussed.
Mentors
Stephanie Morgan; Peter Chesney
Fellows
Julie Lee; Sarah Markley; Alexandra Wheatley; Connor Eckert
Project
Fellows projects ranged from digital guidebooks, zines, resource guides, maps and videos. They can be found here.