The role of culturally appropriate food practices and traditionally practiced indigenous and immigrant gender roles are Madeline Brennan’s focus for research in American Studies. She is a senior in her final semester and is pursuing a career that helps enact change to support these populations.

Music journalist turned PhD student Matthew Tchepikova-Treon is particularly fascinated by how disenfranchised artists, laborers, and communities began participating in cultural production through exploitation cinema—something that was mostly unavailable to them prior to the 1970s. These “trash films” aren’t just a simple form of cheap entertainment.

“I always felt part of a close community of public intellectuals, voices, and perspectives,” says PhD alumnus Matthew J. Martinez. In this interview, he reflects upon his experiences as a graduate student and how American studies prepared him for his role as first lieutenant governor of Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo.

Meet American Studies 2018 Graduate Student Cohort.

The Race, Indigeneity, Gender & Sexuality Studies Initiative (RIGS) was established in 2015 to support innovative research, teaching, community-building, and engagement for scholars and students addressing issues on these topics. RIGS is dedicated to bringing faculty and students together to pursue lines of inquiry that challenge systems of power and inequality, assert human dignity, and imagine social transformation.

The University of Minnesota Board of Regents has given faculty member Erika Lee the distinction of Regents Professor of History and Asian American Studies. The designation, granted this month, is the highest level of recognition given to faculty by the University.

In 1829, Dakota leader Mahpiya Wicasta (Cloud Man) led a group of Dakota men on a hunt. The group became trapped in a blizzard for three days, buried under the snow. He later founded an agricultural community on the site, which he called Ḣeyate Otuŋwe, on the shores of a lake that Dakota people today call Bde Maka Ska. Nearly two centuries later, Cloud Man’s great-great grandchildren led the charge to reclaim the lake’s Dakota name, after having long been named after white secessionist John Caldwell Calhoun.” We don’t call it a change, we call it a restoration,” descendant Katherine Beane says when asked about the renaming of Lake Calhoun to Bde Maka Ska.

Professor Jean O'Brien has been awarded the Dean's Medalist award for 2018. As a historian and a mentor, one of her goals is to explore and teach the importance of persistence.

CLA alumnae Kate Beane and Carly Bad Heart Bull have brought positive change and representation by restoring the name Bde Maka Ska to the lake previously named for the infamous secessionist John C. Calhoun.