The History of UMN – as Important as Ever

These four undergraduate students love studying history. And each has paired history with another discipline. Each of them also has their own take on the History at CLA experience.

National History Day at the U, continued

With a new year comes new classes and this semester, Professor Zozan Pehlivan is teaching “Global Environmental History,” the first environmental history course taught at the University of Minnesota.

The Yelling for History club was founded by a group of students at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities who took HIST 3053 Ancient Civilizations: Rome with Loren Cowdery in spring 2018. The group mixes roleplaying, history, public speaking, debates, reenactment, politicking, and much more into games that are inherently designed for learning by doing.

“We tend to forget how central employment is to our lives. It doesn’t just shape who we are at work; it shapes who we are outside of work,” says Professor William Jones about his research on public sector employment. The relationship between employment and inequality is one that has persisted through history.

Billy Bigham highlights the advantages of an interdisciplinary undergraduate career. Find out how a double-major in Russian and history prepared him for law school.

Nate Garvis (BA '85, history) works with people who want to shape the future, but as a history major, understanding the past helps him understand the people he meets and places he visits now. A lover of learning, he is grateful for the "thirsty mind" and ability to see from different perspectives that his liberal arts education has given him.

Trying to make sense of the country’s latest debate over immigration is Erika Lee, a professor in the Department of History and the Asian American Studies Program, a Regents Professor and director of the Immigration History Research Center (IHRC). A faculty member since 1998, Lee has been working to connect US immigration history to contemporary conflicts over immigration and race erupting across the country and worldwide.