Mississippi River Open School for Kinship and Social Exchange

Revealing the Mississippi River as an interconnected ecological corridor that structures our collective past, present, and future in the Anthropocene

The Mississippi River Open School for Kinship and Social Exchange (2022–2025) is a structurally radical, community-engaged educational project that turns the university inside out to make it a home for public pedagogy, reconceiving the relationship between universities and frontline communities. This book collects, curates, and represents much of the work produced by, through, and in collaboration with the Open School. It foregrounds the central methodology of collaboratively imagining and practicing experimental modes of teaching and learning for the planetary climate emergency by drawing from a growing archive of creative writing, art, film, interviews, and activist toolkits, and it engages pressing issues of race, environment, and extraction as it connects crises experienced along the Mississippi River, from its headwaters to the gulf.

Contributors: Morgan Adamson, Jamie Allen, Kayla Anderson, Ida Aronson, Sara Black, Bruce Braun, Imani Jacqueline Brown, Nicholas Brown, Andrea Carlson, Aron Chang, Jennifer Colten, Morgan Piper Cordova, Amber Ginsburg, Tammy Greer, Shana M. griffin, Ryan Griffis, Brian Holmes, Sarah Kanouse, Sarah Lewison, Jacob Lindgren, Stephanie Lindquist, Jason Ludwig, Jenna Mae, Shanai Matteson, Nelson Mondale, Tahani Nadim, Ozone 504, Sara Pajunen, Lynn Peemoeller, Claire Pentecost, Roopali Phadke, Zane Piontek, Catherine Russell, Kirisitina Sailiata, Meira Smit, Joe Underhill, Monique Verdin, Jesse Vogler, Colin Waters, Mark Williams, Jan Zalasiewicz.

Distributed for the Mississippi River Open School for Kinship and Social Exchange.

Dio Cramer is an artist and geographer living in the Mississippi River watershed in Minneapolis.

John Kim is associate professor of media and cultural studies at Macalester College in St. Paul.

Jeremy Meckler is a scholar, instructor, and collaborator in media and cultural studies at Macalester College.

Rebecca Snedeker is an artist, writer, curator of public programming, and bioregionalist based in Bvlbancha/New Orleans.