History Beyond the Walls works with community partners to post Wish Walls throughout Rice County

What do you wish for America as it enters its 250th year? 

From January to February this year, residents of Rice County were invited to reflect on this question and respond on one of the eight “Wish Walls” placed in community spaces across the county.

Made possible by a collaboration between the Rice County Historical Society and the Carleton course HIST 216: History Beyond the Walls, taught by Serena Zabin, Stephen R. Lewis, Jr. Professor of History and the Liberal Arts, the Wish Wall project gave residents an opportunity to reflect on their own hopes and connect with the wider community.

Before becoming available to the public, extensive preparation was required, such as coordinating with community partners, setting up the sites, and analyzing responses, much of which was carried out by Zabin and her HIST 216 students. 

This course has an Academic Civic Engagement (ACE) designation, which, in the words of Carleton’s Center for Community and Civic Engagement (CCCE), “puts academic skills and learning to work in the service of community priorities.”

“Half of the class, the more traditional part, studies what it means to ‘do history’ in and for the public,” Zabin explained. “The other half of the class involves a big project we do in conjunction with a community partner and with the help of the fabulous CCCE, without which this is not at all doable.”

For HIST 216, this large project required coordinating with eight community partners instead of just one, a task Zabin started managing before the class even started. Nonetheless, the project still presented challenges.

“One of the challenges involved scheduling events with people who are not on campus and don’t live with our school’s calendar,” Zabin said. “Another challenge is there is a lot of time spent not within our traditional class time. So, we were tasked with figuring out what that extra time looks like. Is it equitable?”

From the perspective of Ruby Mathiason ’29, a student in the class, this extra time was definitely worth it.

“We set up these walls and spent so much time out of class problem solving, talking to our community partners, and meeting with different people,” they said. “It has been really fun getting out of the classroom.”

Not only were these visits productive, but for many students, building a Wish Wall was also one of the first times they had stepped outside of Northfield, helping expand their understanding of the broader community of Rice County and Minnesota.

“I hope, and feel fairly confident, that students will leave with a sense of where Carleton is located within a larger community,” Zabin said. “Most of my students had never been to Faribault [the next town over]. So, some sense of where does Carleton sit in the world? Where’s Northfield?” 

For historians, understanding their place within the broader community is an essential skill, one that is difficult to cultivate from inside a classroom.

“What I loved about doing this project is that theory only counts for so much,” Mathiason said. “It’s amazing to do the reading and know some of these theoretical underpinnings behind what we’re doing, but, ultimately, it gets you to really talk to people and connect with them.”

In the last weeks of term, HIST 216 began sorting through the cards, identifying recurring themes, and drawing connections to the U.S. centennial of 1876. As for the final deliverables, the Rice County Historical Society plans to showcase the cards and their findings on their Instagram account, @ricecountyhistory, which they encourage everyone to follow. The cards themselves, along with several student essays, will also be placed in a time capsule that the organization plans to open in 50 years for the 300th anniversary of the U.S. Overall, Zabin and her class hope their work has sparked meaningful conversations in both the present and the future.

“I mostly hope people felt like they had a space to say something really meaningful to them that they could publicly post without their name on it,” Zabin said. “I hope people feel their voices are heard and will be heard again in the future.”

Ultimately, history helps place the present in context, revealing patterns from the past that can inform the future.

“History offers perspective. That’s one of the biggest things,” Zabin said. “One of the goals  of our Wish Walls is not just to collect people’s thoughts and hopes for the future, but also to juxtapose it with the centennial of 1876 and to learn about some of the issues that people back then were worried about and were hoping for in the future. There were concerns about immigration, concerns about future directions of the country, concerns about the environment — these have been challenges for our country for a long time.”

After reflecting on their experience as a HIST 216 student, Mathaison has no regrets.

“I think everybody should take an ACE course,” they said. “It’s important to get out into the community, change how you view the relationship between the College and the surrounding area, and ensure that, as a student, you are giving back as much as you can.”