Special Edition Spring 2022: Academics Meet Activism

Students inspired by Gwen Nell Westerman create art to share with community

Minnesota poet laureate Dr. Gwen Nell Westerman visited campus on February 10 to share her poetry as well as her artwork, primarily fiber arts. Westerman is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation as well as enrolled in Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota Oyate.

Westerman was invited to campus as a part of the ongoing 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 Integrated Learning Series. According to the St. Kate’s website, the Integrated Learning Series is, “one way we partner academics with activism, the paper with the performance and the campus with the community. It is the array of courses, activities, speakers, events, performances and exhibitions that coalesce into our ways of knowing.” The current series is Indiginous Thought Leadership.

Immediately after Westerman was named Minnesota poet laureate, associate professor of English Dr. Kristen Lillvis reached out to her and asked if she would be willing to visit campus.“We were really excited about the opportunity to have the Minnesota poet laureate, and especially the first indiginous poet laureate in Minnesota come to campus,” Lillvis said.

Since Westerman’s first visit in February, members of the St. Kate’s community have been busy working on projects inspired by her work. The projects are based on “bringing together literature, art, dance, design, and other fields,” according to the Integrated Learning Series webpage.

One of the projects created was a hanging mobile sculpture based off of Westerman’s poem Saving Scraps in the “Sociocultural Aspects of Dress” class in the fashion department with Dr. Anupama Pasricha, Department Chair and Professor of Fashion Design and Merchandising. Students  worked through the three part poem in class and worked to design a mobile and quilt pieces that symbolized aspects of the poem. First they created an overall concept. Then they created quilt pieces that were tied to star frames with symbols from the poem, that were then hung from the mobile. 

For another project, American Sign Language (ASL) students are going to do an ASL interpretation of one of Westerman’s poems. Other fashion students are making “costumes and they’re doing a movement piece where Westerman will read one of her poems and they’ll perform it,” Lillvis said. 

Lillvis and the Integrated Learning Series partnered with Residence Life to create the Craft-ivism event that took place on Mar. 15. Students were able to work with Pasricha to learn how to make a quilt piece and work with Lillvis on creating poetry. The quilt pieces were then turned into a quilt to showcase the students’ work. 

“I was hopeful that people would want to get engaged this broadly with Dr. Westerman’s work, but it’s really exceeded my expectations that people across the university and really different disciplines have been excited by her work,” Lillvis said.

On April 27, Westerman returned to campus where members of St. Kate's community showcased their work that was inspired by her. Everyone was looking forward to performing and showing Westerman what they had been working on. The event happened in person and over zoom and was open to everyone in the community.

“I think anytime we can see the work we do at the university is bigger than the university, it makes it more meaningful and so I hope it'll lead to additional ways that we can interact with the community,” Lillvis said. “That includes alumni who've been really motivated by the work that we're doing, but also other writers in the area and artists in the area so that we can help them get to know St. Kate's a little bit but also we can show off the amazing work that we're doing here and help people become more aware of it.”