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U of MN sociology professor Douglas Hartmann, a member of the IHRC's Faculty and Student Advisory Council, and his colleague Joe Gerteis have been awarded the 2006 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award from the Political Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association for their 2005 Sociological Theory article, "Dealing with Diversity: Mapping Multiculturalism in Sociological Terms."
Donna Gabaccia, director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota, said it is common for the children of immigrants to try to reconnect with their neighborhood in their later years. In New York, people who grew up in Brooklyn neighborhoods have created Web sites to connect with friends from their youth, she said. See article in Chicago Tribune, July 25, 2006
With gifts contributed to the IHRC’s Timo Riippa Fund for Finnish American Studies, the Center is hosting an intern from Germany for a 10-week stay that began July 17. The intern, Tanja Aho, was born in Finland but grew up in Germany and has dual Finnish/German citizenship. A student of Finnish and American studies at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University in Greifswald, Germany, she is working at the IHRC on a collection of poems and other writings by the Finnish-American author Terttu Kätkä.
Tanja's work will result in a full inventory of the manuscript and serialized writings of Katka, a prolific contributer to the FInnish American press in the mid-late 1900s. Ms. Aho will also be working to provide digital access to the IHRC's photographs from the annual cultural festival FinnFest USA, contributed by Robert and Mae Selvala, and providing English translations for a digitized photo publication, the Amerikan Albumi.
Tanja notes, “I am happy to have been granted such a rewarding experience and cannot wait to share my insights with my fellow students back in Germany. As information on Finnish emigrants and Finnish literature composed outside of Finland is hard to come by in Germany, I hope to gain deep insights into the topic during this internship and find much inspiration for further research.�
So you think you know about immigration?
It's a frequent lament: If only Minnesota's newest immigrants were like Ole and Lena -- or Johann and Bertha -- who swiftly learned English, shunned government handouts and observed the same laws that so many of today's immigrants ignore. But don't believe stereotypes, say the folks at the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota.
Star Tribune
http://www.startribune.com/462/story/531837.html