What do U know?
Located in the heart of Bridgeland, the University of Minnesota is one of the country’s most distinguished research institutions, but how much do we really know about the work that goes on there?
Thanks to the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), anyone can get a taste of the various research being conducted at the university and beyond.
Housed next door to the Bell Museum inside the Nolte Center, the IAS describes itself as “a lively intellectual community that fosters faculty research and creative activity across academic disciplines.”
Established just three years ago, the institute supports research and creative collaboration across disciplines, through public programming, fellowships and an annual symposium that includes a variety of events organized around a single theme. The best part is, the vast majority are open to the public, and they’re free.
In the last year alone, IAS put on more than 160 events, ranging from lectures and film screenings to panels and conferences, said Susannah Smith, managing director of the institute. IAS events cover a wide variety of subjects, from the esoteric to current events. Lectures in November include the title, “Simulations of Time and Life in Medieval Automata: Islamic Symbolism, Teleological Mechanisms, and Ontological Difference” and “Telling River Stories,” a series of weekly talks related to the I-35W bridge collapse. The IAS often co-sponsors events with other university departments, as it did with the bridge series.
“We want diversity in terms of the kinds of topics, the disciplines they’re drawn from and the kinds of presentations they’re going to be,” she said.
Smith said the institute tries to reach out to the community at large. “One of the problems with university research is that it can be kind of arcane,” she said. The academic presenters at IAS events understand that those who attend the lectures are interested in the subject matter but are typically not experts.
Academics need to be able to talk to the general public, Smith said, and IAS’s multitude of public offerings, including “Thursdays at Four,” one of three major ongoing lecture series, create a place “where people come to tell a general public what they do.
“We want to bring our stuff to the community, as well as bring them here,” she said. “This is our university. We all share it.”
In October, Bridge contributors attended three IAS-sponsored lectures:
Women in Modern China: From Golden Lotus to Iron Maiden to Supermodel
Author and Macalester English Professor Wang Ping used poems and photos to take listeners through China’s rapid cultural transitions and their impact on women. In one hour, Ping flipped through China’s history, from the traditional era, with its bone-crushing practice of women’s foot binding, a sign of status; through the grey, unisex clothing and increasing role of women in the workforce during the 1950s; on into the Cultural Revolution and its “model workers;” and ending the mixed blessings of the current industrial boom, through which China has seen both economic prosperity and the return of opium addiction, brothels and the sex trade.
Ping’s talk was part of the Weisman Art Museum’s “China Now at Noon” series, promoting its current exhibit “Documenting China: Contemporary Photography and Social Change.” The IAS co-sponsored the event.
Raised in Mao’s China, Ping said when she was little, “girls were all trained how to attack and how to kill. I went through several military trainings in elementary school,” she said. Today, China has a growing middle class and a growing emphasis on youth and good looks. Yet, as the emphasis on youth and appearance shoots up, the woman’s status and employment goes down, Ping said. Seventy percent of lay-offs are women. The leading cause of death for women ages 15–35 is suicide. The average health care spending on a rural peasant woman is $10 a year.
Between 70 and 80 people attended Ping’s lecture, which included a free light lunch courtesy of Rainbow Restaurant. One graduate student, recently arrived from a suburb of Beijing, said she was surprised to learn of the poverty among rural Chinese women.
— Scott Russell
Culture Matters: The Role of Race and Ethnicity in International Adoption
In a dynamic hour-and-a-half-long presentation, Richard Lee, distinguished adoption researcher and associate professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, explored issues of identity, ethnic discrimination and psychological well-being, in the context of international adoption.
A diverse audience of close to 60 students, faculty and interested members of the public gathered to hear Lee discuss the findings of several recent and ongoing studies of cultural socialization in adoptive families.
Beginning with a history of adoption in the United States, Lee briefly discussed the Orphan Train Movement, the first interracial adoption in America (which took place in Minnesota) and the effect of technological advances and military and religious intervention on international adoptions.
Lee then shifted to his research, which looks at parental attitudes about promoting culture and race; how adoptees learn about culture and race and how that relates to their identities; and the effect of identity on mental health.
While it is widely thought that post-adoption situations are an improvement from pre-adoption conditions, Lee told audience members that fact alone shouldn’t overshadow the discrimination minorities can face after adoption. In many cases, the discrimination an international adoptee feels is actually stronger than in their pre-adoption experience, Lee said.
— Liz Riggs
Rebuilding Common Ground
On Oct. 9, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak reflected on the events and aftermath of the Aug. 1 collapse of the I-35W bridge, in which 13 people died and more than 100 were injured. Approximately 40 people attended the session, including students, city officials and university faculty.
“I hope one of the lessons of the bridge is that we’re all on common ground,” Rybak told them, repeating often the phrase that was central to the theme of his lecture. Rybak also used the occasion to criticize state and national priorities that he believes contributed to the disaster.
“Our country has ignored the basic infrastructure,” he said. “It’s clear we’ve underinvested.” Rybak took aim at Gov. Tim Pawlenty and his veto of a gas tax increase, yet he talked about how the two traveled together to the bridge site in a State Patrol helicopter on the night of the collapse. A beautiful view of the Downtown skyline gave way to “the horrible sight of the bridge gone,” Rybak said. “Not bodies and blood, but steel and concrete in bizarre positions … I could barely speak,” he told the audience. “It was overwhelming to me.”
After the lecture, University of Minnesota Prof. of Landscape Architecture Lance Neckar said the mayor “set the right tone about the bridge as a deeply emotional wake-up call about the city and what the city means.”
-Bill Hoffmann
last revised: November 19, 2007