Research and Creative Collaboratives 2008-09
Creating Culturally Informed Trauma Research: An Interdisciplinary Approach
How can practitioners better respond to and treat individuals suffering from the effects of trauma?
What role does culture play in how trauma is understood and responded to?
How do traumatic life events affect different cultural groups, particularly non-Western groups, and particularly for this study, immigrants to the Twin Cities from Somalia and Oromo? And how can we better respond to the needs of these groups with respect to trauma?
Convener: Patricia Frazier (Psychology, CLA)
Dubai, Inc.
How can the visual arts be used to raise critical questions about identity, economics, and sustainability with respect to the rapid growth of this global mega-city?
How can art help communities to understand the benefits and consequences of rapid growth?
Convener: Andréa Stanislav (Art, CLA)
The Making of Global Cities
What are the economic, political and social processes that are shaping how mega-cities of the global South are being transformed, as they seek to become global cities?
What are the implications of these changes for addressing important social issues such as expanding slums, insecure land rights, unequal access to public goods (such as water or health care), and environmental problems?
What alternative theories and practices of development are emerging in the global South that could foster more socially and ecologically sustainable cities?
Conveners: Michael Goldman (Sociology, CLA), Helga Leitner (Geography, CLA), Eric Sheppard (Geography, CLA), Ragui Assaad (Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs), and Joe Allen (Asian Languages and Literatures, CLA).
Mexico-Minnesota Dialogue: Past, Present, Future
How can we understand Mexican-Minnesota migration through historical, contemporary, and future perspectives, and what does this migration mean economically, educationally, and politically for Minnesota?
How can the U of M better serve the Mexican and Mexican-American communities in Minnesota?
Conveners: Patrick McNamara (History, CLA), Joan Dejaeghere (Educational Policy and Administration, CEHD), and Kristi Rudelius-Palmer (Human Rights Center, Law School).
Music and Sound Studies Initiative
How are new technologies and research interests changing the way we understand the category “music”?
How should the institutional study of music at U of M respond to the emerging interdisciplinary field of “sound studies,” which brings together researchers who focus on sound from such perspectives as media; linguistics; speech and language; space, environment and architecture; sensory perception; physics, etc.?
Convener: Sumanth Gopinath (Music, CLA)
Performance and Social Justice
In what ways can artistic performance developed through community/university collaborations advance the struggle against racial and environmental injustice throughout the world?
In what ways can participation in an artistic performance community build creative energy, political awareness, and community activism among marginalized groups, particularly women of color?
How can performance arts inform other academic disciplines and inquiries?
Conveners: Ananya Chatterjea (Theatre Arts and Dance, CLA), Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley (English, CLA), and Jigna Desai (Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, CLA).
Rethinking Statehood: Sovereignty, Memory and Citizenship in Minnesota 150
What have been the historical, cultural, and political relationships between the University of Minnesota, American Indian sovereign governments, and the larger Twin Cities community?
How can more just futures and a more vibrant University be imagined through learning from contemporary American Indian ways of living and knowing in the realms of politics, law, science, education and community outreach, and the performing and visual arts?
Conveners: Brenda Child (American Indian Studies, CLA), Chris Baeumler (Art, CLA), and Sonja Kuftinec (Theatre Arts and Dance, CLA).
Transitional Justice and Collective Memory
Do transitional justice practices—e.g. human rights trials, truth commissions, reparations, vetting, museums and other memory sites, archives, oral history projects, photography and film projects—help to prevent or deter future repressive episodes or human rights violations?
Can better understanding of how these practices construct collective cultural memory shed light on their ability to prevent or deter repression?
Convener: Kathryn Sikkink (Political Science, CLA).
Transnational Film and Media Studies
How can knowledge about the intrinsically transnational character of film—including understandings of such processes as resistance, appropriation, reconfiguration, and deconstruction cast in transnational contexts—help us understand the contingencies of cultural identity and exchange across national borders?
Convener: Jason McGrath (Asian Languages and Literatures, CLA).