Featured Scholar: Paul Mullins, PhD
Invisible Indianapolis: Race, Heritage and Community Memory in the Circle City
ude[dot]iupui[at]llumluap
Paul Mullins was a historical archaeologist who studied the intersection of materiality and the color line, focusing on the relationship between racism, consumption, and urban displacement. He is the author of Race and Affluence: An Archaeology of African America and Consumer Culture; Glazed America: A History of the Doughnut; and The Archaeology of Consumer Culture. Mullins’ research has focused on urban displacement in Indianapolis, examining how a century-old, predominately African-American community was displaced and is now reconstructing its history. His scholarship has included archaeological excavations, documentary research, and oral history in Ransom Place, Flanner House Homes, the present-day IUPUI campus, and postwar African-American suburbs. The research on the history of the IUPUI campus has produced an oral history collection, The Price of Progress: IUPUI, the Color Line, and Urban Displacement, which was co-edited with community partner Glenn White. The book illuminates the legacy of urban renewal and the erasure of African-American life in the near-Westside.
During 2016-2017, Mullins, along with his Anthropology Department colleague Susan Hyatt, were named the inaugural Charles R. Bantz Chancellor’s Community Fellows. Their project, “Invisible Indianapolis: Race, Heritage and Community Memory in the Circle City,” examined the history and material culture in a series of Indianapolis neighborhoods that are currently effaced, ignored, or misrepresented in public discourse. The goal of the project was to use ethnographic interviews and documentary research to illuminate how otherwise “invisible” neighborhoods provide powerful insights into challenging the histories of the class, cultural, religious and racial inequalities that continue to shape our city. Much of this work was documented in a blog maintained by Mullins, Invisible Indianapolis.
Mullins’ final book, published in 2021, was Revolting Things: An Archaeology of Shameful Histories and Repulsive Realities. The book examines how we deal with material objects and landscapes associated with traumatic historical events and that often conceal the persistence of structural inequalities. Mullins passed away in 2023 after a year-long struggle with a malignant brain tumor.
Selected Publications in IUPUI ScholarWorks
With several research works contributed to IUPUI's free, open access repository, Dr. Mullins has made translational research knowledge available to professionals, researchers, students, and communities around the world.
Seitsonen, O., Mullins, P. R., & Ylimaunu, T. (2019). Public memory, National Heritage, and memorialization of the 1918 Finnish Civil War. World Archaeology, 51(5), 741–758. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/23945
Hyatt, S. B., & Mullins, P. R. (2019). Using Campus Ethnography to Reveal Social Inequality. General Anthropology, 26(1), 1–10. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/23261
Mullins, P. R. (2017). The Optimism of Absence: An Archaeology of Displacement, Effacement, and Modernity. In L. McAtackney & K. Ryzewski (Eds.), Contemporary Archaeology and the City: Creativity, Ruination, and Political Action (244). Oxford University Press. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/18407
Mullins, P. R. (2018). The Materiality of Consumer Culture. In O. Kravets, P. Maclaran, S. Miles & A. Venkatesh (Eds.) The SAGE Handbook of Consumer Culture, 351. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/18351
Ylimaunu, T., Haggrén, G., Nurmi, R., & Mullins, P. R. (2017). Chapter Sixteen Medieval and Early Modern Marketplaces: Sites of Contacts, Trade and Religious Activities. In J. Harfula, S. Hukantaival, V. Immonen, A. Randla, and T. Ratilainen (Eds.) Sacred Monuments and Practices in the Baltic Sea Region: New Visits to Old Churches, 262. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/18350
Mullins, P. R. (2018). [Review of the book Broken Chains and Subverted Plans: Ethnicity, Race, and Commodities, by C. C. Fennell]. Journal of Anthropological Research, 74(2), pp. 279-281. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/18349
Mullins, P. R. (2017). Imagining Conformity: Consumption and Homogeneity in the Postwar African American Suburbs. Historical Archaeology, 51(1), 88–99. https://hdl.handle.net/1805/18275
Kryder-Reid, E., Labode, M., Holzman, L., Mullins, P. (2013, April 5). Art, Race, Space. Poster session presented at IUPUI Research Day 2013, Indianapolis, Indiana. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/5445
Mullins, P.R. (2013). The rhetoric of things: Historical archaeology and oral history. Historical Archaeology, 48(1), 105-109. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/4862
Mullins, P.R., & Jeffries, N. (2012). The banality of gilding: Innocuous materiality and transatlantic consumption in the gilded age. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 16(4), 745-760. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/4672
Mullins, P.R. (2011). The archaeology of consumption. Annual Review of Anthropology, 40, 133-144. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/4671
Mullins, P.R. (2011). Practicing anthropology and the politics of engagement: 2010 year in review. American Anthropologist, 113(2), 235-245. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/4670
Mullins, P.R., Labode, M., Jones, L.C., Essex, M.E., Kruse, A.M., & Muncy, G.B. (2011). Consuming lines of difference: The politics of wealth and poverty along the color line. Historical Archaeology, 45(3), 140-150. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/4864
Mullins, P.R. (2008).Excavating America's metaphor: Race, diaspora, and vindictationist archaeologies. Historical Archaeologies, 42(2), 104-122. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/4863
Mullins, P.R. (2008). The politics of an archaeology of global captivity. Archaeological Dialogues, 15(2), 123-127. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/4596
Mullins, P.R. (2006). Racializing the commonplace landscape: An archaeology of urban renewal along the color line, 38(1), 60-71. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/4669