Black Arts Minnesota: An Autoethnographic Approach
2026-04-25 10:00 - 12:00 UTC | Bethlehem Lutheran Church – Commons Room, 41st and Lyndale, Minneapolis
This talk demonstrates how archival research and artistic practices bear witness to a Black presence in Minnesota dating as far back as the 1860s.

A North Minneapolis native and fifth-generation Minnesotan, Davu Underwood Seru currently serves as the Curator of the Givens Collection of African American Literature and Life at the University of Minnesota. Formerly, Davu was an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of English at Hamline University where he taught courses in research, writing and literature, for which received the prestigious Dr. Colleen S. Bell Outstanding Faculty Award. Additionally, he is co-author of the book Sights, Sounds, Soul: The Twin Cities Through the Lens of Charles Chamblis (MNHS Press 2017) and is an award-winning, internationally recognized drummer and composer.

Poetry Day
2026-05-16 10:00 - 12:00
Morgan will do a retrospective reading, a sort of live-time selected and new gathering of poems highlighting work from different periods in her life as a poet. She will also share examples of her explorations into the book arts, including her artist book Collage for Mina Loy and Stitch by Stitch, the anthology which accompanied the Quilt, Not Quilt exhibition at Minnesota Center for Book Arts

Morgan has published poetry collections and chapbooks with titles such as Dodge & Scramble, Between, Silk, Oddly Enough, The Maps are Words, Arpeggio of Appetite, and Spinnerets. The journals and anthologies in which her poetry has appeared include: Ecopoetics; Resist Much/Obey Little; Queer Voices (Minnesota Historical Society Press); Water~Stone Review; Saint Paul Almanac; When We Become Weavers: Queer Female Poets on the Midwestern Experience; About Place Journal. Morgan’s creative nonfiction publications include “Riding Shotgun for Stanley Home Products” in Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers (MHS/Borealis Books). Her essay “Signs of the Time” earned an honorable mention in the inaugural Judith Kitchen Prize in Water~Stone Review #14, and her lyric essay “(Un)Document(ing),” which appeared in Water~Stone Review #22, was nominated for a Pushcart prize. Her work has garnered awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the McKnight Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, and the Witter Bynner Foundation.
A student of the book arts, Morgan completed the core certificate program at Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA) and exhibited her artist’s book Collage for Mina Loy in 2016. She collaborated with three other poets in composing and hand crafting the limited edition chapbook Stitch by Stitch which accompanied Quilt, Not Quit: The Afterlife, an exhibition at MCBA in 2018. Morgan’s collages have been published online in Concision Poetry Magazine as well as in print in Saint Paul Almanac, Volume 13.
Morgan serves as teaching artist with The Loft Literary Center as well as the COMPAS Artful Aging program. Currently, she is co-editing the anthology Nick of Time: Women Write about Art & Aging, forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press in fall 2026.

The War at Home: Minnesota during the Great War, 1914-1920
2026-06-27 10:00 - 12:00
Americans went to war in 1917 not only against Germany but also against each other at home. The controversial declaration of war came during a contentious time when farmers and workers challenged the wealthy, African Americans struggled against Jim Crow and lynchings, women campaigned for suffrage, and millions crusaded against alcohol. In The War at Home, Greg Gaut focuses on the lives of individual Minnesotans to tell the dramatic story of this period, when the state experienced bitter polarization, nativism, flagrant disregard for democratic norms, and intense, occasionally violent, confrontations.

The Minnesota Commission of Public Safety ruled the state with an iron hand during the war. Led by John F. McGee, the commission pursued a “loyalty” campaign especially against trade unions and the Nonpartisan League. McGee’s most prominent adversary was Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., whom the Nonpartisan League nominated to challenge the governor in the fiercely contested 1918 primary. Although Minnesota’s home front experience was the product of a particular confluence of events and personalities, it raises issues about how democracy can give way to authoritarianism when economic inequality, anti-immigrant nationalism, and racism rule the day.

Greg Gaut is an historian whose career has included two decades of teaching at a liberal arts college and a decade of work as an historic preservation consultant primarily preparing National Register of Historic Places nominations around the state of Minnesota. With his wife and co-author Marsha Neff, he is a frequent contributor to Minnesota History, and two of their articles won the David Gebhard Award for the best article on Minnesota’s built environment. A lover of libraries, he published Laird’s Legacy: A History of the Winona Public Library and Reinventing the People’s Library, a history of St. Paul’s Arlington Hills Public Library which is now the East Side Freedom Library. His article on a World War I espionage case, Hardware Store Sedition: The Case of Charles W. Anding, won the Solon J. Buck Award for the best article in Minnesota History for 2020. He holds a doctorate in Modern European and Russian history from the University of Minnesota.
