Meet a Short-Term Fellow: Christian Bell

Story

Christian Bell
Theater Arts and Dance, College of Liberal Arts
University of Minnesota Twin Cities

IAS Short-Term Fellow, The Mission of the Land Grant/Land Grab University

 

I come to the short-term fellowship as a scholar of performance with a vested interest in how we collectively shift the emphasis of the Land-Grant/Land-Grab university from economic progress to the struggle for equity and inclusion. In “Changing the Story About Higher Education's Public Purposes and Work,” Scott Peters states that, “we need to pay attention, in each of our particular locations, to the ways we and others tell the story of our public purposes and work. By story, I do not mean just history. Rather, I mean a live, unfinished narrative in which we position ourselves as active participants.” Following Peters, I’m interested in interrogating the meta-narratives that continue to be told, enacted, and celebrated in relation to the Land-Grant/Land-Grab legacies of institutions. How do those meta-narratives uphold technical and economic progress? What are those counter-narratives that create visibility for cultural, economic, and environmental oppression? How do we collectively imagine and enact narratives that emphasize the labor needed for more equitable institutional spaces?

 

Fig. Wounded Many (2018) by Keith Secola (Ojibwe), Gizhiigin Arts Incubator, Mahnomen, White Earth Nation, MN (2019)

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