Event Details

The DeWitt Wallace Library - in partnership with the Kofi Annan Institute for Global Citizenship (IGC), the Jan Serie Center for Scholarship and Teaching (CST), and the Department of Multicultural Life (DML) - invite faculty, student, and staff, and local alumni to participate in a pilot project related to the history of Macalester.  Members of the Macalester community who want to explore Macalester’s history in the context of contemporary scholarly work on equity and diversity in the history of higher education and a critical history of Minnesota are welcome to join us on this 10-week journey, beginning the first week of February. Ultimately, our goal is to develop an outline to create a new, updated, inclusive, and critical history of Macalester College and this pilot project will lay the groundwork towards that end.

 As a starting point for our discussion, we will provide a copy of the most recent, although still limited, history of the college, Nature and Revelation: A History of Macalester College by Jeanne H. Kilde (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.) We are also in the process of identifying additional works that discuss higher education in the context of issues related to slavery, decolonization, discrimination, and resistance. We will also work with materials in our college archives that highlight a history that is complex and diverse.  We are looking for individuals who wish to engage in readings and conversations to address questions that include:

• What are the stories and voices that are included in dominant narratives about Macalester’s history? Who and what is absent from that history?
• Who were the pre-colonization inhabitants of the land on which the college is now built, including the specific history of colonization and displacement and how the college came to be developed in its current location?
• How can a new history expand on the history of multiculturalism and internationalism at Macalester and provide more light on key historical figures such as Catharine Lealtad, Esther Suzuki, Kofi Annan, as well as initiatives such as the EEO (Expanded Educational Opportunities Program)?
• Identify what other questions and issues group members might want to address as we explore and critically analyze Macalester’s history.

Questions?  Please contact any of the steering committee members: Angi Faiks, Terri Fishel, Ellen Holt-Werle, Donna Maeda, Joan Ostrove, or Marjorie Trueblood.