A message from Chair of American Culture

Dear friends and donors,

In this contentious presidential election year, it is vital for Michigan students to understand American culture and how we—as individuals, as members of diverse ethnic groups, as people of color, and as humans inflected by gender, sexuality, disability, indigeneity, religion, and class—fit into this complex and rich mosaic. Global military conflicts, domestic shifting politics, and cultural mores all contribute to this complexity. The members of the Department of American Culture and its four constitutive ethnic studies programs continue to offer crucial courses, mentorship, and events programming. We not only play a major role in U‑M’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion but also embody its mission with resilience and accomplishment as we near the ninth decade of our existence. We need your help to continue to carry out this critical task entrusted to us as educators, scholars, and intellectuals.

We’re happy to share that American Culture won the 2024 Department Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education! Our graduate student Pau Nava researched their dissertation entitled “From Morelia to Chicago: Midwestern Mexicandidad Through a Purépecha Fountain in Chicago Public Place” in Oaxaca, Mexico, this summer, presenting that research via a poster session at this year's Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS) Summer Institute held in Unidad de Extensión Universitaria, UNAM:OAXACA. And our Ojibwe Language instructors, led by indigenous speaker and Lecturer Alphonse Pitawanakwat, Lecturer Kayla Gonyon, and Assistant Professor Cherry Meyer won the Humanities Collaboratory grant for the project, “From Revitalization to Decolonization: Nishnaabeg Language Pedagogy and Indigenous Epistemologies” that will promote Ojibwe dialect historically spoken in the land on which U‑M stands.

This is only a small portion of what we’ve accomplished this year. We embody public scholarship at its best, while our rigorous undergraduate and Ph.D. programs promote teaching in the service of democracy. Our extraordinary faculty in Arab and Muslim American Studies, Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies, Latina/o Studies, and Native American Studies collaborate with our partner departments, while our students benefit from instruction by faculty from a broad range of LSA units. 

By giving to the American Culture Strategic Fund, you can contribute to our efforts to expose students to cutting-edge knowledge and community engagement, to help us educate culturally attuned leaders for diverse communities and a better future for us all. Please join me, in my first year as the chair of the Department of American Culture, in making this pivotal work possible. More information can be found on our website.

My best regards,

Magdalena J. Zaborowska, Professor and Chair
Department of American Culture