2009-10 Programming
Mending Lives: Imagining Iowa as a
Global Village
It is often underappreciated that in Iowa one finds crystallized many of the
national and international issues currently in the news.
Mending Lives:
Imagining Iowa in the Global Village will create a space in fall 2009
for Iowans to engage in public forums on national and global concerns that
have deeply altered, disrupted, and sometimes traumatized people's lives.
Rather than invoke the often idealized notions of 'healing' and 'recovery',
our emphasis is on how these situations require ongoing mending, or
raccommodage, to borrow a concept from 2006 CEAH guest speaker
Mindy Thompson Fullilove.
Mending Lives will also put Iowa in
conversation with experts on local aspects of these issues as well as
experts who will illuminate the national and global aspects of the
topics.
These topics may include, but are not limited to:
The war in Iraq and its impact on Iowans
Operation Wagon Train, the herding up of undocumented workers in
December 2006 by the federal Dept. of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement
The closing of the Maytag plant in Newton, Iowa, and the emotional and economic
effects on those workers and the community
Displacement and relocation issues of evacuees from the Gulf states
devastated by Hurricane Katrina
Des Moines' Center Street and African American 'Historical
Districts'
Immigrants' experiences, including the influx of Southeast Asian
refugees in the 1970s during the administration of Goveror Robert Ray
Historical/Personal/Communal Recovery Projects, such as the Hometown
Museum project in Perry, Iowa.
If you are interested in participating in this program, or would like more information on Mending Lives: Imagining Iowa in the Global
Village contact ISU English professor Jane Davis at amalia@iastate.edu
Programming committee for
Mending Lives:
Jane Davis, English Department
Gene Matibag, Center for American Intercultural Studies
Joe Kupfer, Philosophy Department
Gary McKay, CEAH Advisory Council Member, Meredith Publishing
Brenda Daly, CEAH Director
