Our Towns: Remembering Community in Indiana

For 20 years, the Indiana University Oral History Center collected interviews from hundreds of people who lived in Indiana for most of the twentieth century. John Bodnar discovered in these interviews a unique opportunity to examine the true nature of Indiana communities in the early part of the century. Did a fundamental notion of community actually exist in the shared consciousness of those questioned? What were its values? When and how did it change? How did it differ from nostalgic depictions such as Thornton WilderÍs Our Town?

John Bodnar, professor of history and director of the Oral History Research Center at IU, is the author of several books including Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (1992), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.