Departments & Centers

CLA's academic departments, interdisciplinary research centers, and programs support rigorous knowledge production, path-breaking creative activity, and innovative teaching in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

The College of Liberal Arts supports several collegiate research centers and many more interdepartmental research centers with resources for students focused on collaborative academic research, exploration, and learning. We’re discovering new ways to use research to address society's biggest challenges with the discoveries making a difference in our communities, our nation, and our world.

Academic Departments

The College of Liberal Arts is home to 31 academic departments in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

Collegiate Centers

Center for Applied & Translational Sensory Science

The Center for Applied & Translational Sensory Science aims to address and solve sensory deficit problems by facilitating research and grant funding, enhancing collaboration and outreach to the medical device industry, and providing doctoral and post-doctoral training. The Center is also home to the Multi-Sensory Perception Laboratory, which studies audio-visual perception in a variety of simulated environments.

Center for Austrian Studies

The Center for Austrian Studies is an interdisciplinary center for the study of the Habsburg Empire, Austria and other successor states, and the new Europe. It connects students, scholars, and an international community with resources in Austria, Central Europe, the European Union, and Minnesota.

Center for German & European Studies

One of the nation's top centers promoting teaching and research on Germany and Europe, the Center for German & European Studies seeks to connect established and emerging scholars, students, K–12 teachers, policymakers, business leaders and other professionals, and the general public.

Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies

The Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies promotes public awareness, academic research, and education on the Holocaust and other genocides as central components towards the prevention of and response to mass violence.

Center for Jewish Studies

The Center for Jewish Studies fosters a new understanding of Jewish culture and history by supporting the academic study of the historical, cultural, linguistic, ethnic, geographic, and religious diversity of the full range of peoples who identify themselves as Jewish.

Center for Premodern Studies

The Center for Premodern Studies includes the Medieval Studies and Early Modern Studies communities focused on innovative research, pedagogy, and graduate training.

Center for Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender & Sexuality Studies

The Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender & Sexuality Studies (RIDGS) was created to support innovative research, teaching, and community-building for scholars engaged with issues of race, indigeneity, disability, gender, and sexuality. RIDGS 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.

Immigration History Research Center

The Immigration History Research Center strives to promote interdisciplinary research on migration, race, and ethnicity in the US and the world by documenting immigrant and refugee experiences (especially in the US) and supporting public programming connecting research to contemporary issues and communities.

Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science

The Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science advances research and graduate training in the philosophy of science and related studies of science and technology. The center conducts collaborative research and conferences with researchers from around the world.

Interdepartmental Research Centers and Initiatives

African Studies Initiative

The African Studies Initiative stems from the premise that the interactions among the various regions of Africa, as well as with the rest of the world, are critical to scholarly enterprise. ASI explores themes such as race and ethnicity, urbanization and migration, modernity and modernism, transnationalism and globalization, as well as representation and language.

Center for Early Modern History

The Center for Early Modern History focuses on studying the early modern world emphasizing a global and comparative approach and supporting historical work, drawing upon a variety of disciplines, methodologies, and perspectives.

Center for the Study of Political Psychology

Widely regarded as one of the premier research and graduate training centers in the United States, the Center for the Study of Political Psychology (CSPP) is dedicated to the establishment of a strong research community for social scientists focused on the theoretical and practical advancement of political psychology.

Center for Writing

The University of Minnesota’s Center for Writing is rooted in over four decades of commitment to writers and the use of writing as a tool for critical thinking, learning, and communicating in all fields by supporting students and educators who practice, teach with, and research writing at the University of Minnesota, throughout the state, and around the world.

Data Science Initiative

The College of Liberal Arts embraces the innovative methods of scholarly research and exploration enabled by data science, and critically evaluates the ethical implications and cultural biases exposed in and through its algorithms, data sets, and tools. The Data Science Initiative aims to prepare and support our researchers and students to justly address the grand challenges facing our communities and our world.

Davis Center

The Julia M. Davis Speech-Language-Hearing Center offers a broad range of services for individuals with impairments of speech, language, and hearing. The Davis Center strives to provide service to the community and the University of Minnesota, and advocates for individuals with speech, language, hearing, or cognitive-communication disorders.

Environmental Humanities Initiative

The Environmental Humanities Initiative (EHI) seeks to catalyze research, foster pedagogical innovation, and enhance public outreach among CLA faculty and graduate students interested in broadly humanistic approaches to environmental issues that stretch across the globe.

Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute

Launched in 2010, The Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute aims to advance Minnesota’s legacy of producing field-shaping research and to build a bridge between its world-class economic research and policy that promotes the public good.

Interdisciplinary Collaborative Workshop

The Interdisciplinary Collaborative Workshop (ICW) program spurs new collaborations among scholars in CLA and beyond. It provides support to bring together faculty, staff, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students from a variety of fields to intensively study a topic.

Liberal Arts Engagement Hub

The Liberal Arts Engagement Hub connects scholars in the arts, humanities, and social sciences and community members to respond to important social problems. The Hub offers programming that supports community-university collaborative partnerships and a space in Pillsbury Hall that can be reserved for community-engaged events and activities.

Middle East Collaborative

The Middle East Collaborative serves as the host to a wide and thriving community of scholars and researchers in the field of Middle East Studies spanning disciplines in the social sciences and humanities and time periods from the premodern era to the contemporary world.

Minnesota Journalism Center

The Minnesota Journalism Center's purpose is to foster journalism innovation through research and interactions between media professionals and the academy. The Center organizes lectures and an annual workshop, as well as sponsors and co-sponsors events with the journalistic community.

Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law

The Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law focuses on the concepts and values that define the highest ideals of American journalism: freedom and fairness. It honors the importance of these ideals by examining their theoretical and practical applications and by recognizing the interdependence of ethical and legal principles.

CLA Website Directory

This list contains CLA's academic units, research centers, programs, and initiatives.