For a century, Muncie has served as a laboratory for researchers, journalists, and filmmakers
trying to understand trends in American life.

Local residents have not always appreciated the attention.

This interest in Muncie is the result of the city serving as the subject of Robert and Helen Lynd’s
famous investigation of local life, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture.

The book, which came out in 1929, was a best seller and among the most influential portraits of
American life ever produced. Readers and reviewers were convinced that in studying Muncie,
the Lynds were describing a typical American community.

Middletown sold so many copies that
their publisher sent them back to Muncie in 1935 to write a sequel.

Other researchers followed over the ensuing decades, including social scientists, marketers,
journalists, photographers, and filmmakers, all with the aim of examining a representative
American community up close.

The result is an extensive and valuable archive documenting
community life and history.

Munsonians have greeted all of this poking and prodding “with a grimace but fairly good grace,”
as a local pastor once put it.

We didn’t always appreciate serving as the “proverbial goldfish,” with outsiders showing up to stare into the bowl.

At times, we have bridled over how we have been portrayed in print and in film.

For other locals, the problem with Middletown research is that it left too many people out, most
notably the local Black community. Later researchers have addressed some of those gaps, largely
because of the prodding of local community leaders, but there is more to do on this front.

Now, after a hundred years as “Middletown,” we have a chance to write our own story.

With support from the Community Foundation of Muncie and Delaware County, the Facing Project
and the Center for Middletown Studies have launched Facing Middletown, an effort to document
life as it is lived in Muncie in 2025.

The project has two main parts. The first is a community-compilation documentary produced with award-winning
screenwriter and filmmaker Rani Deighe Crowe that aims to assemble filmed contributions from
local residents to tell a story about what it’s like to live in this city.

The second is a book that collects unvarnished, first-person histories describing life in Muncie.
We will produce the book using the Facing Project’s storytelling method, pairing writers with
storytellers to create individual narratives.

An overarching question guides both of these initiatives:

How do you live a good life in Muncie, Indiana, in 2025?

We want to understand people’s lives a little better.

And we want to learn how this community enables people to live a satisfying life and how local conditions

creates obstacles to doing so.

The hope is that the film and book inspire action that can help everyone living here

create the lives they want for themselves. 

Equally important, we aim to create a space for local residents of all backgrounds and opinions to have their say

about what it's like to live in Muncie, instead of leaving it to the "experts".

Who powers the Center for Middletown Studies in 2025?

Dr. James Connolly, Historian, Director, Dr. Jennifer Erickson, Assistant Director,

and Muhammad Hafeez-ur-Rehman, Graduate Assistant and Managing Editor of Everyday Life in Middletown. 

Learn more:

About the Center, Center for Middletown Studies, Ball State University | Ball State University

Editors note: Do you have a story that will inspire others to share theirs?

Send blog ideas or stories up to 500 words to Aimee Robertson-West at facingmiddletown@facingproject.com

Remember, there are three ways to participate in Facing Middletown: 

Contribute video clips for our community-compiliation documentary

Become a writer or storyteller

Go on the record about life in Muncie through an interview

JOIN US FOR OUR UPCOMING EVENT, SEPTEMBER 20th, 2PM at Ross Community Center!