May 2019

THROWBACK THURSDAYS: More than the Mississippi: The River as "Here"

The University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus sits on both banks of the Mississippi River, one of the world's great waterways. The river has sustained the land, plants, animals, and peoples who have lived on it for millennia, yet too often it remains a blue line on a map, or "just water," a minimizing of its power, necessesity, and history. In the spring of 2015, the Institute for Advanced Study, along with the River Life program, presented a symposium entitled "The Once and Future River: Imagining the Mississippi in an Era of Climate Change," which was funded by the Andrew W.

THROWBACK THURSDAYS: LiDAR, Water, and the Demise of Greater Angkor

The impacts of climate change can be very rapid, as with the unexpected and precipitous decrease of arctic ice in recent years, erosion of low-lying coastal areas, and increased weather instability impacting traditional crops. While the planet is reckoning with the fastest climate change effects in its history, human impact on the environment has been occurring for millennia, and newer technologies can help scientists and historians discover, investigate, and make conclusions about ancient calamities.

Ways of Knowing Water

The Institute on the Environment (IonE), Weisman Art Museum, and Water Bar and Public Studio collaborate on establishing a community of artists, scientists, healing practitioners, poets, architects, scholars of culture, thinkers, craftsmen and others to learn together how to feel, think, know, read, and taste water. In a series of regular study sessions we are exploring the environmental, the indigenous, the experiential, the scientific, the poetic, the communal, and other aspects of water.

Religion and the Public University

The role of religion on public university campuses has changed significantly in the 21st century as religious identity has been afforded increasing significance in the intersectional selves of students, faculty, and staff. While this is a positive development for many, changing attitudes toward religion have also spurred conflict and raised challenges that in some cases administrators are at a loss to address.

Narrrative/Medicine: Personal Narrative Analysis across the Liberal Arts and Medical Practice

Scholars from a range of disciplines, along with practitioners in medicine, psychology, and other forms of healing or therapy, have turned their attention in recent years to intersections between experiences pain or trauma and the creation of narratives to describe and grapple with these experiences. More broadly, scholars in the humanities, and increasingly the social sciences as well, are engaging with personal narratives (such as memoirs, diaries, and oral histories) as objects of study or sources of evidence.

Minnesota Youth Story Squad: Critical Youth Work in Urban Public Schools

As an interdisciplinary collaborative, we are investigating new ways to tell the nuanced stories behind educational benchmark statistics about Twin Cities urban public school students. This praxis begins with an imperative need to understand the experiences of youth from their own perspectives. Since 2016, our inter-collegiate, community collaboration has integrated interdisciplinary digital humanities with community engagement as we harness the power of storytelling as a process and product to amplify youths’ voices.