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Project Details
This StoryMap traces the environmental and social implications of changing textile cleaning practices across home-based laundry, domestic help, laundresses, and commercial laundries in Indianapolis. It explores more particularly the history of dry cleaning, an industry complicit in the structural and environmental racism that has created disparate health impacts on low income, communities of color, and other marginalized people in urban areas.
Subjects or Themes
Environmental justice, dry cleaning, pollution, toxic waste, heritage
Project Language(s)
English
Time Period
Geographic Location
Project Categories
Content Type
archives, visual culture, GIS, citizen science, mapping
Target Audience(s)
Creators
Research Team - Social and Environmental History of Dry Cleaning:
Consultants:
Consultants:
Year(s)
2020-2021
Host Institution / Affiliation / Project Location
IUPUI, Cultural Heritage Research Center, Indianapolis, IN USA
Software Employed
Labor and Support
The project began with IUPUI's participation in the Climates of Inequality collaborative research project. That foundational research on the environmental justice history seen through Indianapolis' waterways (https://climatesofinequality.org/story/inequity-along-the-white-river-local-advocacy-for-change/) was conducted by students across three semesters. The focus on dry cleaning, part of a broader investigation of toxic heritage globally, was conducted collaboratively by four faculty, led by Elizabeth Kryder-Reid. The production of the StoryMap benefited from the consultation of the digital team, particularly David Kloster's integration of Kryder-Reid's "Dirty Laundry" Twitter presentation https://twitter.com/KryderReid/status/1323320674774077440 and the team's research on Site 0153 with GIS data from our project and from IDEM's (Indiana Department of Environmental Management) newly released spatial database of dry cleaning sites.
Project Cost
Partnerships, funding sources, or grant-funding acknowledgement
Research funding provided by the IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute.