Geography assistant professor Eric Shook takes an untraditional approach to geography and explores the world through geospatial computing. His work is leading to better ways of using cropland here in Minnesota and a deeper understanding of how we interact with each other.
Ananya Chatterjea dedicates her work to liberation and justice. Through her dance and research, she strives to encourage new ways of thinking and new ways of seeing the world.
College of Liberal Arts faculty are driven to follow their passion for creating new knowledge and in the process bring depth and meaning to the lives of countless others.
To Alysha Alloway (master of geographic information science ’19), a map can explore how the homeless interact with transit in the Twin Cities, and how a community can create a transit system that meets the needs of all its citizens. Her project, “A Better Way to Get There,” recently won the “Most Provocative/Transformative” award in the U of M’s annual U-Spatial Mapping Prize contest.
Josef Woldense has been able to construct a picture of the administration of 20th-century Ethiopian ruler Haile Selassie to provide a close analysis of ways autocrats keep their power. He has developed a game to help his students understand how precarious the role of an autocrat can be.
Elliott Powell, a professor in the American studies department, researches the historical intersection of sexuality, gender, and race in popular music. He looks at the role of sexuality in collaborations between South Asian and Black popular music from 1960 to the present.
Evolving culture means evolving language. Students in the Spanish and Portuguese graduate program are thinking about how to create inclusive classroom environments for all students, not only those with binary gender identities.
Kidiocus King-Carroll studies Black life in Milwaukee and the Midwest. As a doctoral candidate in American studies and resource co-coordinator at The Black Midwest Initiative, his research dives into the meaning and making of Black social life through autoethnography, family narratives, and social histories of his home in the Midwest.
Professor Jessica Lopez Lyman is following 11 contemporary, local artists to uncover the intersection between art and social justice work. “It's been such an inspiring experience to see these Latinas out there, giving of themselves, using their art as a tool to educate,” Lopez Lyman says. Her research will contribute to the growing scholarship around Midwestern Latina/o/x communities.
“How we relate to other species feels like a really important and contentious issue in this moment,” says Assistant Professor Corinne Teed. Teed uses participatory art to reframe conversations about climate change and encourages people to learn from other species and look at environmental issues through an emotional lens.
Examining the severe effects that climate change has on the human body, Associate Professor Kathryn Grace blends her passion for women’s health and quantitative analysis to bring attention to reproductive health in the hot climates of Africa.
Professor Jenny Schmid of the Art Department has been continuing her work of combining mythical characters with contemporary situations using intaglio, lithography, and public art performance.
Douglas Kearney, a Whiting Award-winning poet and assistant professor of our English Department, shares his thoughts about the work of internationally celebrated black and queer poet, Danez Smith.
Associate Professor Matt Carlson (Journalism) has written "Measurable Journalism: Digital Platforms, News Metrics and the Quantified Audience," which explores ways in which the increasingly ‘measurable’ news audience has had an impact on journalistic practices. This book was originally published as a special issue of "Digital Journalism."
Can ancient Greek literature teach modern society more about how to solve problems? S. Douglas Olson is attempting to prove it can. He studies ancient literature, translating it to make it accessible to the modern reader.
New to the department, Assistant Professor Madelaine Cahuas brings a breadth of knowledge and lived experience to her research and teaching of human geography. Honing in on the resilience of Latinx women and youth, Cahuas dives into the impact that space, place, and identity have in social organizing.
Through her research, Assistant Professor (and SLHS alumna) Evelyn Davies-Venn uncovers the silent epidemic—a lack of access to hearing technology and healthcare.
Our ability to understand speech has always been subject to how well we hear. But can cultural, social, and behavioral linguistic differences (within a language) impact how well we hear and understand? Professor Benjamin Munson and Dr. Alayo Tripp are studying the impact of race-based biases on how easily older people understand the speech of younger people.
Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality studies graduate student and self-titled scholar-activist Moriah Shumpert discusses their interdisciplinary studies and what drew them to the University of Minnesota.
Alum uses stories to push for criminal justice reform: Catch the SEEN exhibit, a collaboration with Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop, through February.
