Healing in the Heart of Africa
Working with children at a Rwandan primary school
this summer gave Hanna Stevens '11 a more personal view of the genocide that permeated the
country more than a decade ago.
"It was frightening to think they (the students) may have been killed if their lives had begun just 15 years
earlier," she says.
Stevens was among four Concordia students and two English faculty who spent a month teaching and volunteering in Rwanda as part of a Summer Field Studies program. Today Rwanda is peaceful and safe, but the country still wrestles with the aftermath of 1994 when Hutu militia killed thousands of the country's Tutsis.
Building relationships with Rwandans who lived through the horror helped make it more real, Stevens says.
"Frankly, '1 million dead in 100 days' affects me differently than a single person's story or a visual example of the mass killings," she says.
But Stevens also was in awe of how Rwandans have made efforts to forgive the unforgivable and work toward peace.
Read Stevens' personal account of her time in Rwanda in the fall issue of Concordia Magazine.
Title VI Grant to Expand Asian Studies
A $180,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education will help build a comprehensive Asian studies program at Concordia.
The Title VI funds will be used to add courses to the Asian studies concentration of the global studies major, develop the Chinese (Mandarin) major and revise other
courses to include Asia-related content. It will support collaboration between the Moorhead campus and Concordia Language Villages, using the resources of the Villages to provide immersion-language instruction in Japanese and Korean.
Asia is a vital regional focus of the global studies major, says Dr. Linda Johnson, professor of history and program director for the grant. The region is home to 60 percent of the world's population, includes the second and third largest economies in the world - China and Japan - and the two most rapidly expanding economies in the world - China and India.
"Knowledge about Asia, particularly firsthand knowledge developed in study away programs, will enable Concordia students to address the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities afforded by living and working in Asia," Johnson says.
Lintelman Earns Praise for Immigration Book
In her new book, "I Go to America," history professor Dr. Joy Lintelman ably recreates the life of Mina Anderson, an immigrant from Sweden who expressed her gratitude for coming to America in a heartfelt memoir.
In her own words, "I have never regretted that I left Sweden. I have had it better here."
Lintelman greatly expands upon Mina's memoir, detailing the social, cultural and economic realities experienced by countless Swedish women who came to the Midwest seeking a better life. Lintelman praises their courage, hard work and pragmatism as an embodiment of the American dream.
Philip Anderson, president of the Swedish-American Historical Society, Chicago, says Lintelman is the authority on the lives of Swedish-American immigrant women.
In her book, "her female characters tell their stories of everyday life" that are "by nature personal, experiential and emotive. This is a fine contribution to ethnic, women's and Minnesota history," says Anderson.