About the Speaker: Patrick Nunnally
Patrick Nunnally is a cultural historian and planner whose research, teaching, and consulting practice center on the connections between people and the places
they value. "My way of understanding the landscape is to see it as an artifact of the culture that created it," he explains. Nunnally introduces
students to this way of perceiving the landscape through his class, Learning from the Landscape. In this course, Nunnally helps students understand why the
landscape around us looks the way it does and what that reveals about us. |
| For over a decade Nunnally has developed a unique practice as a consulting historian. He helped organize and directed a conference,
"River of Dreams: The Humanities and the Upper Mississippi River," and has presented his work at numerous academic and professional meetings.
Nunnally has worked with public agencies and private firms on many planning projects for culturally sensitive sites. In addition, his writings appear in
various history and historic preservation journals. |
| Nunnally's latest published work is a chapter in the book, Grand Geographical Excursions, published by the University of Iowa Press. In his
chapter, titled "Picturesque Mississippi," Nunnally studies how the participants in the 1854 Grand Excursion, a celebrated trip organized by the
railroads to introduce people to the Upper Mississippi, saw the river and its valley as they traveled by boat from the Quad Cities to Saint Paul. "They
were seeing the Picturesque in 1854," Nunnally contends, "and we still see the river this way." The Picturesque view of the river, he continues,
is embodied in the region's management plans and design guidelines. |
| Nunnally has spent the past decade involved in projects focusing on the Mississippi River, involving planning, research, communication, and
interpretation efforts that bring together a variety of collaborative partners. This experience forms the background for his course “Making the
Mississippi,” offered to undergraduates and containing a strong “service learning component. |
| In addition to his teaching, Nunnally is currently a part of the staff of the University’s Institute on the Environment, coordinating
its River Life Program. “The purpose of the River Life Program,” Nunnally said, “is to establish strategic and lasting relationships between
the University and the communities engaged in riverfront revitalization along the Mississippi River. For example, not many people know that most of the
Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota is located within a unit of the National Park Service. University Avenue and Oak Street form part of the
boundary of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area; the campus areas west and south of that line fall within the national park. “What does it
mean to have a university within a National Park?” Nunnally wonders, “We’re working with partners off campus to explore ways in which our
teaching, scholarship, and the ways we manage our physical facilities all respect and utilize this internationally-significant waterway that’s right at
our front door.” |
| The River Life Program is currently housed in the Metropolitan Design Center, 1 Rapson Hall. More information about the program can be found at www.riverdesign.umn.edu. |
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