New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession, newsletter

by Candace Barrington

Dr. Krista Sue-Lo Twu (University of Minnesota Duluth) has been awarded the Medieval Academy’s CARA Award for Excellence in Teaching!

Also, Dr. Twu’s interdisciplinary team–comprising Dr. Gilbert Tostevin (Department of Anthropology: College of Liberal Arts; University of Minnesota Twin Cities) and Dr. Lydia Garver (Associate Director, Center for Premodern Studies; College of Liberal Arts; University of Minnesota Twin Cities)–has received a $12,000 UMN Institute for Advanced Study Research & Creative Collaborative Grant, which will extend the programming and outreach activities of the Book of the North project and bring in even more community collaborators.

In particular, this grant will be used for the Research and Creative Collaborative, The Liberal Artisan, a project reconnecting labor and scholarship, the mind and the hand, and the material and the theoretical, as a way to foster a way of being and working grounded in embodied communities of knowledge and skill. It is a reminder of our interdependence and a warning for the fragility of expertise in the modern age. As we increasingly commit to cognitive skills and digital interfaces, the project allows us to consider the roles of our bodies in learning, communication, and solidarity. And as we prepare our students to be leaders, scholars, and entrepreneurs, the project helps us to prepare students to be workers in a world where the dignity and value of their labor may not be recognized and must be advocated for. The Liberal Artisan resists forces of alienation, disembodiment, and social fragmentation by creating spaces to holistically and collaboratively address material, conceptual, and societal challenges.

To learn more about the collaborative communities built through Dr. Twu’s The Book of the North project and Dr. Tostevin’s Anthropology Lab.