Car culture shapes media and popular culture in America. In this project educators learn how the automobile illustrates the social history of the working class, including the Great Migration and the accompanying shadow of racism. The workshops also explore industrial preservation and adaptive reuse to examine why place matters in our communities and how participants can help their students to look at old structures in any community across America. Participants will create teaching materials such as lesson plans, podcasts, and virtual field trips from the sites they visit for students to use as they conduct inquiry. In that inquiry process, they question, use a disciplinary framework, and evaluate sources before communicating their conclusions and taking action in their community. As educators have learned in the recent pandemic, access to digital resources are crucial for student learning as they conduct their own investigations.

Car culture has significantly engaged the American emotional experience, so significantly that the location of the Auburn Motor Company in Auburn, Indiana, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2005. Representing the high-quality experiences participants will have in this workshop, it was noted that:

The Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Facility is nationally significant as one of the few remaining examples of a small independent automobile company. . . . Additionally, the high level of interior and exterior integrity, coupled with its interpretation of administrative space, showroom, and production facilities, contributes to its national significance. 1

Historically, the car part network was a region fifty miles off the Indiana-Ohio border. This was where the parts were made that kept the factory assembly lines running in Detroit. The communities were small towns, big towns, and cities where cars were the lifeblood of the local economy. The history and car culture of the Midwest is best explored in the industrial structures of the car parts region‒a supply chain that stretched across the Midwest to interpret the history of the automobile and car culture. Here place can be heard, touched, felt, smelled, and tasted through the voices, artifacts, and structures left by the people, the race fans, the car shows, the swap meet attendees, the teenagers cruising the strip, and, with the recent virus, the family going back to the drive-in restaurant or the drive-in movies. 

During the week questions for presenters and participants will shape the conversations of the week in reflections and blog posts. The key question for this workshop is, "How do cars, preservation, and class shape life in community?"

1National Historic Landmark Nomination. https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NHLS/78000029_text