Town On Fire Fall 2023

Welcome to Town On Fire Fall 2023, an exploration of Hoosier and Muncie women’s history during the Gilded Age and Progressive Eras (1870-1900 and 1900-1929 CE).

This is the sixth and final installment of the Town On Fire exhibits, curated by Dr. DeSilva. In Fall 2020, students from Ball State University's Department of History celebrated the centennial anniversary of the 19th Amendment (1920) to the American Constitution by investigating the lives of six women who lived during the long campaign for woman suffrage. Since then, working in teams, students from HIST 200 Introduction to History and Historical Methods have created short historical documentaries about women's lives. These videos have been based on original archival research and contextualized with scholarly secondary sources. This project has shown that undergraduate students can be historians from start to finish.

This final exhibit returns to important themes: women's work, civic lives, migration, and criminal arrests. As in life, some women have left ample documentary trails, while others seem to have disappeared. In the following exhibit pages, think about the big ideas that run through this project: gender, class, and race. Then and now, we are impacted by these characteristics in intersectional ways.

Feel free to move through the exhibition in order or explore at your own pace. 

Click “Introduction” to begin. 

This project was made in collaboration with the Delaware County Historical Society in Muncie, Indiana; the Ball State University History Department; the Ball State University Libraries; and the Notable Women of Muncie and Delaware County Project.

Banner Image Caption: Logo by Lacey Back Lantz, Notable Women of Muncie and Delaware County (2021).