Spring 2001
Karen Till asks: What's in that bag?
Photo by Jamason Chen
KAREN TILL
Education
Ph.D. 1996, U of Wisconsin-Madison
Professional history
1998 assistant professor, geography, U of M
1996-1998 assistant professor, Louisiana State U
Selected honors & awards
McKnight Humanities Fellowship, U of M
Association of American Geographers Warren J. Nystrom Dissertation Award
Louisiana State U: Recognition of Superior Instruction of Freshman Students
Work in progress
"Memory in Place: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Berlin"
Kudos
"Karen Till is a creative, energetic, enthusiastic scholar and teacher. It is a joy to work with her. In the interactive course we taught together, Karen broke down the barriers in a way that only she could do."
Empty your purse, briefcase, or backpack. How did a pen from Indonesia, Kleenex from Wisconsin, and a computer disk assembled in Mexico come into your possession? This isn't a security search in an airport, it's a geography lesson in assistant professor Karen Till's human geography course. And it's a lesson in the global economy.
Till wants her students to see geography everywhere--in their cereal bowls at breakfast, on their commutes to campus, and rising above the horizon in the downtown skyline. She wants them to see that everything they touch connects them somehow to another part of the world, to someone's labor, to a distant culture and economy.
"It's only recently in history that we stopped knowing the people who produce our food or manufacture the products we use," she says. "The idea is to get students to think about how what happens in other states and other countries--as well as in their own downtown--affects their everyday lives. That's really what globalization is all about."
Working across disciplines
Lured away three years ago from her faculty position at Louisiana State, Till has found "great incentives to be here," citing great libraries; a top-tier research environment; and wonderful mentors, including geography professors Helga Leitner and Eric Sheppard and German professor Rick McCormick.
Especially important to Till are the many interdisciplinary research centers that bring faculty together from across the U to address important scholarly and social issues. In three years, she has taught an interactive television course through the Center for German and European Studies, helped plan major conferences for the Center for Advanced Feminist Studies, adapted her undergraduate courses for service-learning with College of Liberal Arts' (CLA) Career and Community Learning Center, and co-created a research group through the Humanities Institute.
Teaming up with Sonja Kuftinec in theatre arts and Jani Scandura in English, Till transformed a friendly intellectual conversation at the 1998 new faculty orientation into a robust research collaboration, "Space and Place." Spanning eight liberal arts departments, the group studies how public and private spaces form social identities.
Just for starters, they have examined politics and memories associated with the Berlin Wall, the use of interior spaces in film noir, and street performances in the former Yugoslavia. Colloquia, workshops, and exhibitions sponsored by "Space and Place" have drawn artists and scholars from around the world to Minnesota.
Ambitious ventures like this may seem a singular trademark of the newest generation of CLA faculty. Yet, says Till, it's senior faculty like Leitner and McCormick whose work "makes it possible for my generation to do all the interdisciplinary work that we do. In turn, I think the new ideas and excitement young people bring provide all sorts of creative energy for our tenured colleagues.
"Just knowing there's that energy, and the institutional support for me to do research I might otherwise not be able to do--that makes it great to be here."