On Purpose: Portrait of the Liberal Arts
An exhibition of photographs by Xavier Tavera in celebration CLA's 150th Anniversary
Event info
Learn more about the creation of the exhibition.
Video of artist talk
Behind the scenes video
Across 150 years the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota has been transformed, from the methods of its instruction to the evolution of its disciplines. Alongside those changes, touchstones endure: Vital inquiry. Disciplinary and interdisciplinary excellence. An unwavering dedication to changing lives and communities.
The photographs in this collection capture the essence of the liberal arts and examine our purpose. We are students and scholars. Entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and leaders. We unravel the difficult challenges facing modern societies and educate imaginative minds who create tomorrow’s industry-shaping ideas. We train compassionate graduates who lead healthy dialogues.
What will CLA produce in its next 150 years? We can’t begin to imagine. But we know that the democratizing vision of our land-grant legacy will remain the core of who we are. And we know that we will continue to shatter expectations of what a liberal arts education means and what it offers to diverse individuals and communities—in Minnesota and around the world.
Department of Art History
Contemporary artist Xavier Tavera practices what French philosopher Roland Barthes called “the impossible science of the unique being.” He invites his subjects to stand or sit, talks to them, is curious about who they are and what they do. He coaxes a glance, elicits a gesture, waits for them to settle into position. Describing the strange and estranging experience of being photographed, Barthes writes, “I decide to ‘let drift’ over my lips and in my eyes a faint smile which I mean to be ‘indefinable,’ in which I might suggest, along with the qualities of my nature, my amused consciousness of the whole photographic ritual.” Tavera works with, rather than against, his sitters’ self-awareness and invites their decisions, all the better to stage their own invention of themselves before the camera.
Learn MoreThe International College
CLA is committed to preparing students for life in a globalized world. It is home to more than 300 faculty members across 31 academic units offering over 1,400 courses with globally-focused content. The more than two dozen languages that CLA teaches represent cultures found around the globe and in Minnesota. Through language study, our students connect to new cultures or deepen their understanding of their own past.
Learn MoreRace, Indigeneity, Gender & Sexuality Studies
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.
Learn MoreCLA Alumnus of Distinction
McFadden’s intellectual contributions are many, but his most famous contribution was how to statistically handle discrete choices. Put very simply, before McFadden’s work, the profession used theory based on the assumption that an individual’s “choice set” was continuous, as in, for example, the amount of gasoline a driver uses in a month.
Learn MoreDepartment of Geography, Environment & Society
The why of where. The social becoming the spatial, and the spatial becoming the social. The art and science of mapping. These have all been contenders for answering the question "What is geography?" But geography is, quite simply, what geographers do.
Learn MoreDepartment of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences
Since 1927, our faculty have examined the variations in typical and disordered communication throughout the lifespan. Conditions that interfere with communication are caused by a number of factors including autism, stuttering, severe hearing loss, stroke, a growth on the vocal cords, cleft palate, and cerebral palsy.
Learn MoreHubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication
In our world of unfolding and unpredictable change, the need for informed, thoughtfully engaged media professionals has never been more acute. The University of Minnesota has a 100-year history of journalism instruction. As the industry continues to change, curriculum specializations have expanded to include newswriting, broadcast journalism, magazine journalism, creative graphic arts, photojournalism, advertising, health communication, and public relations. These changes have not only increased enrollment, but also fueled faculty growth.
Learn MoreRev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Program
The tragic death of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968, sparked student activism across the country. Galvanized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Black Campus Movement, and the Black Student Movement, the Afro-American Action Committee (AAAC) at the University of Minnesota occupied Morrill Hall in January 1969.
Learn MoreDepartment of Philosophy
At the University of Minnesota, philosophy also has a long history. Philosophy was part of the “preparatory department” when the University was first chartered in 1851, and the Department of Philosophy was one of the first departments that formed the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences when it was established in 1869.
Learn MoreDepartment of Anthropology
Anthropology involves the comprehensive study of human experience. The most basic questions anthropologists ask are “How are humans the same, and how are they different in all times and in all places on earth?” but also “What distinguishes the human from other species and how do different humans understand that difference?” Anthropologists explore these questions by examining people through biological, archaeological, linguistic, and social lenses.
Learn MoreDepartment of Sociology
Often it’s difficult to know whether we tell our stories or they tell us. Today’s sociologists are not only interpreting the complex social issues affecting our communities, they’re enabling us to better understand ourselves. In an increasingly diverse and ever-evolving society, sociology encourages us to see the world through a broad lens and helps us address the critical questions that shape our everyday lives.
Learn MoreDepartment of Economics
The Department of Economics at the University of Minnesota has for decades been a recognized world leader in advancing economic science and producing its future leaders.“Minnesota Economics” is known throughout the profession as combining theoretical rigor and the careful use of data to address economic questions.
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CLA Alumni Society
Looking back on CLA’s student body just 50 years ago, only around 20 percent of Americans were completing bachelor’s degrees: roughly one-third women to two-thirds men. Now, in 2018, about 33 percent of Americans are earning four-year college degrees, with women slightly edging men. In CLA, around 58 percent of today’s students are female.
Learn MoreSchool of Statistics
In less than three years we will be producing over 1.7 megabytes of new information every single second for every human being on the planet. This new information, along with the vast amount of information that has already been collected, ranges from the mundane to the extraordinary.
Learn MoreSands Scholarship
We believe "access" is a key word, along with "affordable.” For 150 years land-grant universities have helped to provide access to affordable education in our country. This is as it was intended by Congressman Justin Smith Morrill and President Abraham Lincoln. An educated citizenry is a clear public good, as they both then knew. It both benefits the economy generally, as well as the quality of voting participation in our democracy. Human rights for all is important to both Sally and me, and necessarily includes access to affordable, quality education for all equally.
Learn MoreMarching Band
As one of the most exciting and visible organizations on campus, the University of Minnesota Marching Band enthusiastically represents the University of Minnesota with pride at home and away. Founded in 1892 as the 29-member University Cadet Band, we have grown to a highly-selective 330-member ensemble in 2018.
Learn MoreCareer Services
Sharma is a great example of a CLA student who thoroughly utilized the career support available to her. The CLA Career Services staff are the supporting cast for our student superheroes, helping them learn more about themselves and connect with employers who appreciate the value that liberal arts students bring to the world.
Learn MoreDepartment of German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch
Living in a world anticipated by Walter Benjamin in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, where authenticity and truth are questioned, we value what can be traced back to the original, be it in the form of runes and manuscripts or contemporary media.
Learn MoreDepartment of English
In this age of constant communication, English skills have never been more critical.
Learn MoreDean of CLA
Life-changing. Transformative. What do we mean when we say the liberal arts transform lives? Or, put differently, what kind of lives do we believe the liberal arts build? What is the result of our teaching, research, and creativity? A number of ways to think about this question immediately come to mind. Research, creative work, and instruction in the liberal arts promotes, builds, and helps our students and societies achieve the thinking life, the ethical life, the beautiful life, the literate life, the learning life, the inventive life, the questioning life, the analytical life, the responsible life, the aspirational life, the inclusive life, the engaged life, the productive life, the joyful life.
Learn MoreStudent Leadership
Writing a short paragraph about student leadership in this college did not prove to be an easy task. This is perhaps because of what the College of Liberal Arts is: home to the largest and most diverse portion of the University of Minnesota student body, from all walks of life who are moving in all possible directions.
Learn MoreDepartment of Communication Studies
As the discipline that most directly and purposefully studies human communication, our students, faculty, staff, and community partners conduct research that translates into the public good. That is why communication studies was born in Midwestern land-grant institutions like the University of Minnesota, and why it remains an integral and thriving discipline in the College of Liberal Arts. Communication is much more the simple process of translating information from Speaker A to Listener B. Communication is a “constitutive process.” Meaning is made, material is moved, and reality itself is created through the communicative act.
Learn MoreCLAgency
CLAgency changes lives. There’s really no better way to put it. Students learn, among other things, critical soft skills such as communication, time management, and collaboration, which are important building blocks for any successful career.
Learn MoreEnvironmental Humanities Initiative
EHI seeks to address complex issues regarding environments and human and animal bodies through the lenses of history, philosophy, literature, language, culture, religion, and the visual and performing arts. In addition, EHI engages a wide range of related fields, including indigenous studies, political ecology, food studies, cultural geography, animal studies, and cultural anthropology.
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Department of Art
The art department is a place where I can explore and learn so many fascinating things. I’ve taken a wide range of classes, from photography to metal casting, printmaking to super 8. The exposure to different art practices helps me to take an interdisciplinary approach in each class I’m taking. The fluidity between media is really important.
Learn MoreDepartment of American Indian Studies
We call upon our neighbors in the University community and the good people of the state of Minnesota to acknowledge and reflect upon the fact that the University of Minnesota stands on Miní Sóta Makhóčhe, the homelands of the Dakhóta Oyáte. We call upon our neighbors to acknowledge that the river that winds through campus links us to the sacred site of the Dakhóta people’s origin at Bdote, where the Minnesota River joins the Mississippi.
Learn MoreDepartment of Classical & Near Eastern Studies
Humanity likes to keep records. We have written notes to ourselves for thousands of years, preserving everything from tax receipts and official speeches to narratives of war and songs of praise. Any medium could be pressed into service: clay tablets (Mesopotamia); papyrus rolls, broken potsherds, or wax tablets (Egypt, Greece, and Rome); parchment codices and printed books (late antique, medieval, and early modern eras). Most recently, we have reverted to scroll and tablet with digital media.
Learn MoreUniversity Governance: Regents & Provost
University of Minnesota Regents & Executive Vice President and Provost
Learn MoreDepartment of French & Italian
Paris-Providence: “One never returns from any journey, for he who returns is no longer the same. This change of scenery, which we shall seek in other territories, other lights, and other perfumes, is a subtle and necessary internal exile.” (Anne Dufourmantelle, Eloge du risque, 2011)
Learn MoreCenter for Applied & Translational Sensory Science
Sensory loss, or loss of vision, hearing, and balance increases with age and can be related to a decline in quality of life. By 2050, the Census Bureau predicts that the number of persons 65 years and older will approach 20 percent of the U.S. population. Sensory loss of all types is prevalent among aging people, accounting for a sharp decline in social engagement, and a significant reduction in socioeconomic potential.
Learn MoreCLA Emerging Alumni Awards
As one of the original collegiate units of the University of Minnesota and encompassing the foundational disciplines of higher education, the College of Liberal Arts has produced hundreds of thousands of impactful and memorable alumni.
Learn MoreResearch Innovation (CLA Labs & LATIS)
Tree-ring research is a simple but remarkably powerful tool for environmental science. In the global change era, tree rings provide unique perspective on ways that natural systems vary and the influence of human activities. Dendrochronology is also a superb mechanism for introducing students and the broader public to environmental thinking and geographic inquiry.
Learn MoreDepartment of American Studies
The Department of American Studies is one of the oldest and most renowned departments of its kind in the country. Founded over 60 years ago, our early faculty and students found a freedom of expression in interdisciplinary work. Today, our faculty pursue a wide range of scholarly projects as they write award-winning books, receive teaching and public engagement awards, and garner acclaim both nationally and internationally.
Learn MoreInstitute of Linguistics
Linguistics is the study of the human capacity for language. What properties of the human mind allow us to learn and use language in a way that is unique to us as a species? What can the similarities and differences found across human languages tell us about how language is stored and organized in our brains?
Learn MoreDepartment of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies
Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies is a department, a vision, and continuous political labor. We are a community of thinkers who prioritize human connection, alliance-building, and feminist and queer insurgencies within, across, and beyond familiar boundaries of social sciences, arts, and humanities.
Learn MoreChinese Heritage Fellowship
Established in 2004 by members of the Twin Cities metropolitan area Chinese community, the Chinese Heritage Foundation provides grants that support its twin goals: to preserve and promote the understanding of Chinese history, culture and heritage, and to facilitate communication and mutual understanding among all Minnesotans.
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Dean's Freshman Research & Creative Scholars
Lew Blank, a first-year student in CLA, was a participant in the Dean's Freshman Research & Creative Scholars Program (DFRACS). This CLA signature program has offered high-achieving first-year students a scholarship to work alongside a faculty mentor in a research setting. Students are expected to devote 6 to 10 hours per week throughout the spring semester, gaining insights into a new body of knowledge and experiencing firsthand the value and excitement of scholarly and creative discovery at a research university.
Learn MoreDepartment of African American & African Studies
The Department of African American & African Studies was birthed out of student activism and protests for inclusion, representation, and social justice at the University of Minnesota as well as in our nation in the 1960s. The movement culminated in what is known as the Morrill Hall Takeover.
Learn MoreDepartment of Writing Studies
Writing is a fundamental human activity that is rhetorical, social, global, and technological. To write is to define the world around us and create knowledge with others. In the Department of Writing Studies, we examine ways that writing is applied in the world—how it is shaped rhetorically, how it reflects meaning, and how it generates action within and among communities. We examine writing studies as a discipline involving past, present, and future.
Learn MoreMinnesota Youth Story Squad
Minnesota Youth Story Squad (MYSS) amplifies the voices of young people in the Twin Cities. Too often, stories about youth and urban public schools are told from the perspective of almost everyone but youth. But MYSS goes directly to the the source: young people and their Twin Cities schools. We seek to inspire and engage youth by deepening their knowledge about society and public engagement while they learn how to advocate for change.
Learn MoreInstitute for Global Studies
The Institute for Global Studies is a community of students and scholars who explore today’s most pressing global issues. We make connections across boundaries— geographic boundaries, disciplinary boundaries, cultural boundaries, and boundaries across communities.
Learn MoreStaff of Color Community
We want to help advance the college’s goal of cultivating a welcoming and respectful climate in its diverse intellectual community. Through a grassroots effort, we initiated the CLA Staff of Color Community (CLA-SCC). In so doing, we strive to make CLA a destination college not only for students and faculty, but also for staff of color.
Learn MoreDepartment of Asian Languages & Literatures
The Department of Asian Languages and Literatures (ALL) is committed to the interdisciplinary study of three culturally rich areas of the world: East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East. Our graduates gain a global perspective giving them the conceptual tools to influence the world. Students come to us with an intellectual curiosity about the non-Western world. They leave with a deeper understanding of the languages, social issues, geopolitical histories, and cultural texts of diverse countries and regions.
Learn MoreUndergraduate Advising
I’m writing today to thank you for the care you’ve taken to get to know and support me these last four years. It’s been a long road, but you were always there for me along the way. Remember when we first met at summer orientation? It was about a month after high school ended, my parents were still telling me what I should do with my life, and I had no idea what college was going to be like.
Learn MoreDepartment of Spanish & Portuguese Studies
In Velazquez's Las Meninas, the painted scene that we contemplate seems to turn to look at us: there where we place our gaze, we find someone—and perhaps ourselves—staring back. Drawing us into its sphere, the painting shatters the borders between life and art.
Learn MoreDepartment of History
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.
Learn MoreHuman Rights Program
The work of the Human Rights Program is represented here through a series of boxes, geometric patterns that allow us to visualize complex human rights problems. Each box in this photo contains a data point, an actor on a strategic map, or a human being living in tiny box-like shelter in a refugee camp halfway across the world. Our students—represented here by two Master of Human Rights students, Thiri and Ivan, and an undergraduate, Layla—use the analytical skills they develop in our degree programs to determine the causes and complexities of human rights violations.
Learn MoreDepartment of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature
The Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature (CSCL) is a multidisciplinary program in the College of Liberal Arts. Our undergraduate and graduate courses examine how cultural and artistic practices around the globe reflect and transform ways of knowing, of feeling, and of acting politically. They also underpin conceptions of both individual and collective social identity.
Learn MoreDepartment of Chicano & Latino Studies
The objectives of the program…are (1) To provide, within the higher education system, an academic focal point of identification for the Chicanos and their way of life, (2) To provide needed course sequences for Chicano students, (3) To provide opportunities for non-Chicano students to learn about the cultural and historical heritage of Chicanos, (4) to provide a base for inquiry into various aspects of Chicano life and culture, and (5) To provide a base of further institutional provision for the community.
Learn MoreConsortium for the Study of the Premodern World
Civilizations before the advent of specialized academic knowledge and modern public museums often presented their accumulated learning through copious collections that amassed singular meaningful specimens in a display that mirrored in microcosm the complex reality of the universe.
Learn MoreHeritage Studies & Public History
I entered the Master’s in Heritage Studies and Public History program with a background in studying queer and fetish histories and communities, which I continue to study to this day. Almost halfway through my degree, I realized I was facing similar struggles as the people I was studying.
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Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute
The University of Minnesota Department of Economics has historically been one of the top in the world, producing nine Nobel Prize-winning faculty and alumni along the way. Launched in 2010, the Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute was founded as a renewed commitment to supporting synergy in economic research, policy influence, and the communication channels required to solve real-world challenges.
Learn MoreLearning Abroad
Learning abroad is an essential, transformative, and integral part of a liberal arts education. Through facing the unknown and moving beyond what is comfortable, students become more interculturally competent and informed about the world and their place in it.
Learn MoreSchool of Music
Established in 1902, the University of Minnesota School of Music offers a dynamic, comprehensive program to more than 550 music students, 400 Marching Band students, and 4,500 non-majors in undergraduate and graduate programs, led by a world-class faculty of more than 70 artists.
Learn MoreFink Faculty Innovation Fund
Our state and country’s greatest resource is our children. Investing in their education should be uppermost in our minds. Education, in the broadest sense, is critical to the health and advancement of our society. At the university level it should be more than just specific job training at an advanced level.
Learn MoreDepartment of Theatre Arts & Dance
Your body matters and we want to talk about it. My body matters and I want to talk about it. Body/Matters is a student-led discussion that focuses on bodies in space. Any voices, any opinions, any bodies are welcome!
Learn MoreDepartment of Political Science
Today the United States faces multiple challenges: the dramatic and disorienting effects of globalization; increasing polarization among elected officials and the mass public; rising racial tension; wage stagnation; increasing income inequality; and deep concerns over the health and viability of our political institutions.
Learn MoreDepartment of Psychology
Now in our hundredth year, the Department of Psychology, founded in 1917, has been the academic home of many illustrious faculty members including Ellen Berscheid, Irv Gottesman, David Lykken, Paul Meehl, Donald Patterson, B.F. Skinner, and Auke Tellegen. We rank among the top ten psychology departments in the US and have the largest number of undergraduate majors at the University of Minnesota.
Learn MoreXavier Tavera Biography
After moving from Mexico City to the United States, Xavier Tavera learned what it felt like to be part of a subculture—the immigrant community. Being subjected to alienation has transformed the focus of his photographs to share the lives of those who are marginalized.
Learn MoreArtist's Statement
For 150 years, the College of Liberal Arts (CLA) at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities has been dedicated to teaching and research. Many have dedicated their lives to being relevant in their specific discipline. In recognition, a series of portraits has been created to represent the numerous departments throughout the years.
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