Inclusive and Sustainable Rivers
About. River. Life.
The University of Minnesota is a world-class comprehensive teaching and research university located in a National Park—the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area—overlooking one of the great rivers of the world. Yet the Mississippi River in the Twin Cities is a landscape that is both widely loved and highly stressed.
We see rivers and we love rivers but we don’t really understand them. Our knowledge of what rivers mean is dependent on recollected passages from famous books. Our understanding of how we use rivers depends on there being sufficient water so that those practices are not threatened. Changing climate and social patterns are calling both the ways we use rivers and express our love for rivers into question.
We work to understand the ways we stress the river, how we have expressed our love for it, and what we can do to safeguard its future. Taking strategic advantage of our location along one of the great rivers of the world, we seek to create learning, research, and engagement opportunities that will help establish inclusive and sustainable rivers.
River Life and the Institute for Advanced Study are convening an interdisciplinary Sawyer Seminar, “Making the Mississippi: Formulating new water narratives for the 21st century and beyond,” to develop a new intellectual framework and supporting narratives to theorize new ways of thinking about water systems. The faculty seminar and parallel public lecture series will take place during 2014-15, with bi-weekly seminar speakers-both local experts and visiting scholars- representing a diversity of disciplinary backgrounds and geographical specializations.
Learning. Research. Engagement.
River Life uses social media, a digital atlas, and case studies to define the discussions and practices that will create inclusive, sustainable rivers. The program is open to students from any major, faculty from a host of disciplines, and community partners who are focused on river sustainability and inclusive planning.
We initiate and support research projects, engage student learning both in the classroom and in co-curricular settings, as well as develop programs that reach campus and community partners.
Just as rivers cut across countries, boundaries, disciplines, practices and fields of knowledge, our River Atlas will contain information about rivers all over the world. The River Atlas is organized into a series of curated collections associated with the work and projects of River Life and our partners.