Projects and Collaborations

University of Minnesota

The US-Dakota Conflict in Minnesota Newspapers

This research examines representations of the US-Dakota war and its aftermath in Minnesota newspapers between 1862 and 2017. Through a content analysis of more than 400 articles from newspapers in the Twin Cities and from towns in the Minnesota River Valley (Mankato and New Ulm in particular), we traced how different generations of Minnesotans portrayed the conflict and its aftermath. This project looked at 1) changes over time in the narrative and 2) differences in response by proximity to the violence. It sheds light on how the state remembered, or in some cases chose to not remember, this important chapter of its history over the last 155 years.

Mass Violence & Human Rights (MVHR) Interdisciplinary Graduate Group 

In collaboration with the Human Rights Program, we host a biweekly research workshop for graduate students and faculty members of all departments in the humanities, law, and social sciences. The group also organizes symposia, hosts guest lectures, and provides funding for conference presentations.

IAS Collaborative Reframing Mass Violence: Human Rights and Social Memory (2013-2015)

CHGS, the Human Rights Program, and faculty from several departments received a grant from the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Advanced Studies to explore developments and transnational entanglements of social memories in societies, revisiting their legacies of dictatorship, state terror, and grave human rights violations in Latin America and southern Europe. See a list of the events.

Collaborations on Art Education and Mass Violence

We develop arts events and exhibitions with partners at the University and in the community, including the Voice to Vision project, RIMON, the Twin Cities Jewish Community Centers (JCCs), and locally, nationally, and internationally renowned artists.

In January 2015 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, we featured work from Felix de la Concha’s project, "Portraying Memories: Portraits and Conversations with Survivors of the Shoah" at the Weisman Museum of Art. In spring 2016, we partnered with the U of M libraries to develop a collaborative art exhibition, entitled "Displaced: The Semiotics of Identity."

International Partnerships and Collaborations

We maintain close ties with scholars, centers, and organizations in the US and with international academic institutions in Europe and Latin America. Some of our current collaborations include:

  • As part of the ongoing collaboration with the University of Bayreuth (Germany), we co-organized a graduate student summer institute in Bayreuth in summer 2016 through the U of M Center for German & European Studies Trans­-Atlantic Summer Institute (TASI) program, with the support of the DAAD. This program, which continues at the University of Minnesota in fall of 2017, provides a unique forum for advanced graduate students from North America, Germany, and other European countries to explore together the topic of memories of mass violence from a comparative, interdisciplinary, and transnational perspective.
     
  • We are also part of the research group Politics of Memory (CSIC, Madrid) and of RIEMS (Red Interdisciplinaria de Estudios de Memoria) in Latin America (Buenos Aires.) We collaborate with Centro Sefarad Israel (Madrid), with the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung (Berlin) and are a member of Association of Holocaust Organizations (AHO). We are a partner institution of the Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios de Memoria y Derechos Humanos at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia in Madrid, Spain, which offers an MA course and organizes regular workshops and seminars.