January 2021

Awards

Professor Leslie Morris, Chair of German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch, has been named the 2020/21-2022/23 Beverly and Richard Fink Professor in Liberal Arts. The endowed chair aims to advance the extraordinary teaching, research, and creative work of faculty who are making exceptional contributions in their field. 
 

Fellowships and Grants

The Art Department and the Katherine E. Nash Gallery has been awarded a grant in the Exhibition Support category from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. This grant is for the gallery's upcoming exhibition "A Picture Gallery of the Soul," honoring, celebrating, investigating and interpreting Black history, culture and politics in America.

Associate Professor Carolyn Liebler (Department of Sociology) has been awarded a faculty research award from the Human Rights Initiative Fund for her project “Experiences and Family Impacts of U.S Indian Boarding Schools and Adoption/Foster Care in Native Communities."

PhD student Kristen M. Carlson (Communication Studies) is the 2020-2021 recipient of the American Latvian Association Graduate Fellowship. She will research the rhetorical dimensions of diplomatic action in Latvia with the Immigration History Research Center.

Associate Professor Hiromi Mizuno (History) was recently awarded a NEH Grant in the Fellowships for Advanced Research on Japan Program. Her project called “The Age of Nitrogen: Japan, Empires, and Postcolonial Asia” includes research and writing leading to a book on how chemical nitrogen fertilizer affected the economic, political, and agricultural history of Japan and Asia from the 1900s to the 1970s. 

Professor Lisa Hilbink (Political Science) was awarded a faculty research award from the Human Rights Initiative (HRI) Fund for “The Political Source of Rights Consciousness and Rights Claiming: Analyzing Access to Justice in a Changing Chile."

The Minnesota Human Rights Lab has announced grants to support new interdisciplinary projects aimed at advancing scholarly insights into and promoting the practice of dismantling systemic racism and/or building capacity to defend human rights in challenging times. The grants, funded by the Human Rights Initiative and the Grand Challenges collaborative known as the Minnesota Human Rights Model, fulfill the commitment to supporting research on racial justice made by human rights faculty in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in May 2020. 

The CLA awardees are:
 
Teaching for Action: Exploring Human Rights and Civic Engagement in our Global Communities
Focus: K-12 teacher education on human rights and anti-racism
Lead: Outreach Coordinator Deborah Jane, Institute for Global Studies, College of Liberal Arts
External partners: National Youth Leadership Council, and Institute for World Affairs (IWA), University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
 
Indigenous Migrants: Healing through Arts
Focus: Writing workshops for Guatemalan and Mexican migrants
Lead: Assistant Professor Osiris Aníbal Gómez, Spanish and Portuguese Studies, College of Liberal Arts
External partner: Comunidades Indígenas en Liderazgo (CIELO)
 

Publications and Creative Activities 

Professor Paul Rouzer (Asian and Middle Eastern Studies) has published a two-volume set translation of the poetry of Wang Wei (701-761 CE). Wang Wei was a Chinese poet, musician, painter, and politician during the Tang dynasty and is known as one of the most famous Chinese men of arts and letters of his time.