Started in 1808 by Napoleon I, and institutionalized in 1955 by Edgar Faure, President of the Council of the Fourth Republic, the Palmes académiques honor eminent figures at the university level and are awarded by the French Ministry of Education.

Speaking in French at the awards ceremony held on campus, French Cultural Attaché Marie-Anne Toledano cited several reasons why the Brewers' award was so exceptional. She highlighted the quality, richness and creativity of their work, both individually and together in their work on L'Esprit créateur, the journal of critical inquiry into French and francophone studies. She also noted that it is rare for two people to be awarded the Palmes Academiques at one time, but even rarer that the awards go to a married couple, "a man and a woman united in solidarity and as productive in their professional lives as in their private lives." Finally, she thanked them for their "relentless energy in the service of disseminating the French language and culture, both classic and contemporary."

The Enduring Vision Award is the only award of this size and intent in the country. Up to three awards are given annually to artists in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota who have at least 25 years of experience as working artists. For the 2009 awards, nominations were received for artists working in the performing and literary arts.

A regional panel of five performing and literary artists and arts professionals from Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota reviewed and selected 10 finalists for this year's Enduring Vision Awards. A national panel (including one panelist from the regional panel) then selected the three recipients, considering the breadth and depth of the finalists' work, their promise of continued future artistic excellence, the importance of their influence on their communities, and their interest in pursuing deeper investigations and/or new explorations to inform and enrich their work.

Professor Sommers has practiced the theater arts as a designer, director, composer, performer, playwright, and technician, both locally and nationally, for 30 years. In 2000 he and his partner Susan Haas co-founded Open Eye Figure Theatre, and in 2007 the company opened an intimate venue in South Minneapolis. Sommers's work has been seen in venues ranging from major cultural institutions to backyards and the street. Through these experiences, and drawing from traditional theatrical forms, classical text, populist entertainment, folk art and the comedy and "tragedy of our daily lives," Sommers says he "creates original work that speaks in a contemporary voice directly to the audience." His work has been presented at the Walker Art Center and in New York, Chicago, Washington DC, Canada, and Mexico.

Professor Sommers has also recently won a $25,000 McKnight Fellowship and a $50,000 United States Artists Grant. In an interview with the Star Tribune newspaper, Sommers said, "It's a crazy thing. This one feels different, quieter. I have a chance to shift gears, pause and think in a new way, not to sound too corny."

University of Minnesota Provost Thomas Sullivan named professor James A. Parente, Jr. as dean of the University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts (CLA), subject to approval by the university's Board of Regents, which is expected to act at its November meeting.

Parente, the current interim dean, is a professor and former chair of the Department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch and associate dean for faculty and research. He has been a member of the university's faculty since 1993 and has previously served on the faculty at Princeton University and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He earned both his Ph.D. and M.A. from Yale University, in German Languages and Literatures.

"Parente will be an outstanding and visionary leader and strategic thinker who will promote excellence across the entire college. Those who know his exceptional academic work know that it spans multiple time periods, disciplines and languages, and know also the enormous respect he has for the social sciences, humanities and arts," said Sullivan. "As dean of this academically diverse and important college, he will be committed to the values of deep, broad thinking and teaching, and he will ensure that CLA flourishes as an intellectual community."

Parente's awards include the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for Independent Study and Research and a Visiting Appointment to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. He is a discipline representative to the Renaissance Society of America and external evaluator for the National Endowment for the Humanities, a dozen scholarly journals and department and academic programs at UCLA, Harvard, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania.

Parente's candidacy received strong and consistent support from faculty, students, staff and alumni. CLA is the university's largest college and is critical to help the university achieve its goal of becoming one of the top three public research universities in the world. Parente succeeds Steven Rosenstone as Dean.

Minnesota Daily: Students applaud appointment of Parente as dean

It is with great sadness that we announce Rudolph J. Vecoli, former director of the Immigration History Research Center (IHRC) and professor emeritus of history, died Tuesday, June 17, after a long-term illness.Photo of Rudi Vecoli

A premier scholar and leader in the field of immigration and ethnic history, Rudi directed the IHRC from 1967 until his retirement in 2005. Through Rudi's leadership and his passionate devotion to securing and preserving treasures of immigrant history, the IHRC has one of the largest and most important collections of materials documenting U.S. immigration and refugee life in the world.

Rudi's care in securing and preserving numerous immigrant and ethnic related documents will bring him thanks from historians far into the future. It is a service and achievement that few, if any, have matched. Through books, articles, reviews, and presentations, he helped shape the field, and Rudi's work will remain a part of every immigration historians’ bibliography. The IHRC is Rudi's legacy to the community, the University, and the historical profession.

A memorial service celebrating Rudi's life and work will be held the evening of July 9.

MARCH 5, 2008—It is with great sadness that we announce Steve Feinstein, the director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and adjunct professor of history, died Tuesday, March 4. Steve was speaking at the Jewish Film Festival when he had difficulty finding words. He was taken to Abbott-Northwestern Hospital where he died of an aortic aneurism that resulted in cardiac arrest.

Steve had an amazingly generous nature and could get things accomplished that no one had ever conceived or thought possible. From its founding in 1997, he built the University of Minnesota's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies into a premier educational, research, and outreach institution, one that has international renown.

We will all miss Steve's generous personality, constant stream of jokes, and deep commitment to the issues at the heart of CHGS's mission. More than anything else, he was a great humanitarian who believed that knowledge of the past could prevent atrocities in the future.

John Bul Dau, one of the ‘Lost Boys of Sudan’ featured in the film "God Grew Tired of Us" delivered the commencement address at the College of Liberal Arts commencement on May 13, 2007 in Northrop Auditorium.
Picture of John Bul Dau

Dau is one of the thousands of African males in southern Sudan attacked in the 1980s and '90s by the Arab Sudanese government in the north. For 16 years, beginning at age 12, Dau was either on the run from Arab militia and the Sudanese army, wild animals, starvation and thirst or living in refugee camps. In 2001, he was chosen to emmigrate to the United States, a place he had never heard of until he learned to read at age 17.

Dau relocated to Syracuse, New York, to pursue a job and an education. Often working double-shifts at McDonalds, UPS and other places of employment, he received a degree from Syracuse University. He was fortunate to locate his parents and siblings in Uganda and Sudan, and raised the funds necessary to bring his mother and a sister to live with him in Syracuse in 2004.

Now married to one of the "Lost Girls," Dau has worked tirelessly on behalf of the citizens of Sudan. He is the founder of the American Care for Sudan Foundation, which raises funds to build the Duk Lost Boys Clinic, the first medical clinic in Duk County where Dau lived as a boy. Dau is the director of the Sudan Project at Direct Change, which raises funds for rebuilding southern Sudan.

Dau’s experiences as a Sudanese Lost Boy both in Africa and in the United States are recounted in his memoir God Grew Tired of Us, which was written with Michael Sweeney. "God Grew Tired of Us," recently featured at area theaters, was directed by Christopher Quinn and narrated by Nicole Kidman.

William W. McGuire and Admission Possible students from Roosevelt High School
Photo by Mitch Kezar

The College of Liberal Arts is proud to be a partner in a pathbreaking initiative that will create higher education opportunities for economically disadvantaged young people in the state of Minnesota.

The initiative is funded by the William W. and Nadine M. McGuire Family Foundation, which has pledged up to $10 million in grants to help students with significant financial need prepare for college, gain access to the school of their choice, and succeed in college.

The grants—to be made to Admission Possible, LearningWorks at Blake, and the University of Minnesota—create an innovative collaborative model for student access and success that puts the pieces together in powerful new ways.

The McGuire Foundation grant will leverage state, federal, and University monies to help fund up to 90 percent of the cost of attendance for students with the greatest financial need. CLA will play a leadership role in establishing programs to facilitate students’ successful transition to the University and to ensure their academic success at every stage of their academic development.

Components of the strategy include:

• a one-week residential transition program for students during the summer before their freshman year


• integrated learning experiences designed to forge a deeper connection with faculty and with other students


• a high level of academic guidance, including intensive and frequent interaction with academic advisers and faculty mentors

CLA also plans to expand its current partnerships with elementary and secondary schools and to become more heavily involved in the early intervention efforts spearheaded by Admission Possible, Learning Works, and other similar programs.

This spring, CLA will work with the McGuire Family Foundation to convene a conference to broaden and advance the conversations about new models to ensure access to higher education spurred by the McGuire initiative.

The grants are expression of the McGuires’ deep conviction that providing access to higher education is critical to the future of Minnesota. The McGuire grants will help move the University forward on its commitment to access for students regardless of financial means.

Links

• UMN news: News Release, 2/10/06
• For more information about the grant: University of Minnesota Foundation
• Admission Possible
• LearningWorks at Blake

Holocaust survivor and artist Daisy Brand will give a talk and slide show of her work on Thursday, January 12, 7:30 p.m. at the Sabes JCC in St. Louis Park. Brand, who is originally from Czechoslovakia, was deported to Auschwitz and survived that camp, and was then transported to Riga as a slave laborer. Other camps followed until liberation. Her wall sculptures, created from porcelain, stoneware, and wood, frame images of landscapes she links to particular historical events, which increasingly include her memories as a Holocaust survivor. Rather than using more widely recognized symbols and images of those events, she tries to represent her personal memories of the particular landscapes and architecture that surrounded her. Because they are not necessarily archetypes of the Holocaust, her images expand a singular concept of that event and demand that its history remember the ambiguity of personal experiences.
Daisy Brand's work

The exhibition of this work is sponsored by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and opens at the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis on Friday, January 13 with a public reception from 6–8 p.m.

About Daisy Brand

Brand immigrated to the USA from Israel in 1966 and now lives in the Boston area. She was educated at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and Boston University. She has exhibited her ceramic work frequently in New England and in Europe, including France, Italy, England and Canada. She was part of a large exhibition curated by Monice Bohm-Duchen in London during 1995, "After Auschwitz". Brand is an artist who challenges Theodor Adorno's notion that to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. Her own ceramic art incorporates her wartime experiences. "My father was a banker in Bratislava. He was given a posting to the eastern part of Czechoslovakia, near the border with Rumania and Ukraine. While we were there, we were rounded up and transported to a Jewish ghetto. We were then transported to concentration camps. I myself spent time in seven different camps, including Auschwitz. I was only fourteen years old when I was incarcerated and I subsequently saw my entire family murdered."

Other events

Opening reception at Northern Clay Center

Friday, January 13, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
2424 Franklin Avenue E., Minneapolis
FFI: 612-339-8007, www.northernclaycenter.org
Exhibition runs through February 19, 2006
Demonstration and slide lecture

Saturday, January 14, 10:00 a.m. – noon
Northern Clay Center
2424 Franklin Avenue E., Minneapolis
FFI: 612-339-8007, www.northernclaycenter.org

See the Portable Document Format press release for more information about Daisy Brand and her work.

The rich history of the communities surrounding the west bank of the Twin Cities campus is explored in "Community/University: Students Explore West Bank History," an exhibition sponsored by the Department of History and the University Libraries and featuring projects by undergraduate students enrolled in a public history course at the U. The exhibit opened Dec. 21, 2005 and runs through Jan. 27, 2006, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., in the exhibit gallery of Elmer L. Andersen Library, 222 21st Ave. S., Minneapolis. The exhibit is free and open to the public.
West Bank history exhibit

Among the projects on display are a multimedia installation on the Cedar-Riverside music scene, from folk to punk, that features a documentary film containing interviews with musicians and fans; an exhibit that traces the fascinating process of researching and developing Bedlam Theatre's musical, "West Bank Story," which is based on Cedar-Riverside history; and an installation on the history of Little Earth, a community of urban Indians from 48 tribes and the only non-profit corporation in the nation to provide urban Native-controlled housing. The Little Earth installation was developed in collaboration with students and Little Earth residents.

The class emphasized the ways in which historical knowledge enhances community viability and civic engagement, according to Kevin Murphy, the history professor who taught the course. The students conducted primary and secondary research using interviews, published materials, and unique collections from the University Archives, which are also located in Andersen Library.

"Through the course, students put their academic skills to work to bring community history alive and to make connections between the university and the West Bank neighborhood," said M. J. Maynes, department of history chair. "This exhibit offers evidence of the exciting new opportunities available to undergraduates, experiences that will be valuable for a whole range of future careers."

The exhibit is made possible through Coca-Cola Academic and Community Initiative grants.

A reception to honor the students will be held at the gallery on Friday, January 20, from 6:00-9:00 p.m.

Read the press release to learn more about the West Bank history exhibit.

Photo by Everett Kubala

Minnesota radio stations broadcasted live from the University of Minnesota’s Washington Avenue Bridge on Friday, September 9, 2005, from 5 a.m. to noon. The radiothon raised $842,678 by late Friday afternoon for Hurricane Katrina victims.

StormAID was coordinated by the Minnesota Broadcasters Association and the University of Minnesota and held on the University’s Washington Avenue Bridge which spans the Mississippi River.

During the broadcasts, listeners heard a variety of interviews with University faculty experts and alumni; American Red Cross disaster relief workers; and volunteers.

CLA faculty shared their expertise on the wide range of issues involved in the disaster, spanning cultural issues to media coverage:

• Patricia Frazier, Psychology
• Chris Ison, Journalism and Mass Communication
• Judith Martin, Geography
• August Nimtz, Political Science
• Gil Rodman, Communication Studies
• Steven Rosenstone, CLA Dean, Political Science
• Earl Scott, African American and African Studies, Geography
• Eileen Sivert, French and Italian Studies

Two CLA alumni were also involved in the StormAID broadcasts—Jim du Bois and John Anfinson.

Jim du Bois, president/CEO of the Minnesota Broadcasters Association, played a lead role in organizing StormAID. His professional role with the MBA and his volunteer relationship with the University enabled du Bois to help organize a highly successful event. This year he will also receive the University of Minnesota Alumni Association Volunteer of the Year award for his work as the host of the radio program Access Minnesota.

John Anfinson, a University alumnus with degrees in history and anthropology, also contributed his expertise—he was interviewed about the history of the Mississippi River, specifically as it relates to floods. Anfinson is the National Park Service Historian for the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area and the author of a new book on Mississippi river history. During his interviews, Anfinson focused on the flood of 1927 which inundated most of the Mississippi River valley from the mouth of the Ohio River to the Gulf.

Steven Rosenstone, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, is proud of the efforts of his college to respond to the needs of disaster survivors, students, and community. “CLA faculty and alumni are responding to this disaster with creativity, determination, and generosity—characteristics and values at the heart of the liberal arts.”

Professor Earl Scott talks with broadcasters from Minnesota Public Radio.
Professor Earl Scott
photo: Everett Kubala