Twilight project, 2020-2023

From the Twilight Project Web site: "This multiyear project seeks to engage the College community—students, faculty, staff, and alumni—in uncovering and reckoning with the histories of exclusion and marginalization at the College and in its surrounding areas, circa 1800 to the present. By doing so, the College will participate actively in a broader mission of institutional introspection and healing. We will assess and rethink what we know about our institution and inequality in order to guide the construction of a community grounded in justice, equity, and diversity.

Middlebury was the first college in the United States to grant a degree to a student of color (Alexander Twilight, 1823) and to enroll women well before most of its peer institutions (May Belle Chellis, 1883). We have nonetheless struggled with issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. This project will help us bring context to the work still ahead of us. Through special research projects, oral histories, and collaborative artistic and performative programming that interrogate the College’s past, the Twilight Project will augment and sustain Middlebury’s commitment to immersive learning—bringing to light the stories of those who have had little or no representation in the College’s cultural record—as we prepare students to lead engaged, consequential, and creative lives.

We have already begun the archival work of recording students’ experience of COVID-19. The rest of the project is in the planning stages with an intended 2020 launch. It will culminate in a Middlebury-hosted symposium in 2023, the bicentennial of Alexander Twilight’s graduation."