Immigration History Research Center

Perspectives

Immigration. It's a hot topic. And a focus of scholarship, teaching and debate at the University of Minnesota since the 1920s. Thoughtful and provocative perspectives are offered by University faculty and graduate students on migration news. We challenge you to read and to think. This week's topic:

• A Cause for Concern and Study: The Flu Today and in 1918

  By Haven Hawley, Acting Director and Program Director, IHRC

  The spread of a particularly virulent influenza strain in Mexico has rung a public health alarm bell because of similarities to the deadly flu pandemic of 1918. It's far too early to predict that the 2009 experience could be as devastating, but a new historical source based on fraternal association records at the IHRC may help researchers in modeling responses to today's situation.

  (Continue Reading)April 30th, 2009

Collections

IHRC has created a vast archive of newspapers, oral histories, and personal papers, along with the organizational records of immigrants and refugees and the agencies created to serve them. Holdings are particularly rich on the labor migrants who came to the U.S. between 1880 and 1930s, on the displaced persons who arrived in the U.S. after World War II, and on the refugees resettled in the United States after 1975. Holdings include archives, books, periodicals and digital sources.

News

Scholar Events

IHRC seminars, lectures and workshops bring a highly specialized and multi-disciplinary group of University of Minnesota researchers into dialogue with their national and international peers, with university and high school students and their teachers, with journalists, photographers and filmmakers, and with communities of immigrants and ethnic Americans. The IHRC collaborates with the Institute for Global Studies to offer a special series of events called Global REM (Race, Ethnicity, and Migration). Videotapes of the seminars are available on the Global REM Website.

Community

The IHRC engages with many communities in the Twin Cities, and in Minnesota and beyond. It is especially qualified to bring into dialogue the many scholar-specialists from the University of Minnesota with high school students and their teachers, with print and non-print media workers, and with individuals from local immigrant and ethnic communities. The IHRC also works with a community support group, the Friends of the IHRC, to offer special lectures and events. These provide an opportunity for conversation and socializing as well as a way to highlight the place of the IHRC collections in preserving the heritage and promoting the study of immigrant history.