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A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans
with A Theory of Meaning
Jakob von Uexküll
University of Minnesota Press, 2010
Is the tick a machine or a machine operator? Is it a mere object or a subject? With these questions, the pioneering biophilosopher Jakob von Uexküll embarks on a remarkable exploration of the unique social and physical environments that individual animal species, as well as individuals within species, build and inhabit. This concept of the umwelt has become enormously important within posthumanist philosophy, influencing such figures as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze and Guattari, and, most recently, Giorgio Agamben, who has called Uexküll "a high point of modern antihumanism."

A key document in the genealogy of posthumanist thought, A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans advances Uexküll's revolutionary belief that nonhuman perceptions must be accounted for in any biology worth its name; it also contains his arguments against natural selection as an adequate explanation for the present orientation of a species' morphology and behavior. A Theory of Meaning extends his thinking on the umwelt, while also identifying an overarching and perceptible unity in nature. Those coming to Uexküll's work for the first time will find that his concept of the umwelt holds out new possibilities for the terms of animality, life, and the whole framework of biopolitics itself.
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Questioning African Cinema
Conversations With Filmmakers
Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike
University of Minnesota Press, 2002
The most comprehensive account available of filmmaking in Africa today. Diverse in their art, paradoxically more celebrated abroad than they are at home, African filmmakers eke out their visions against a backdrop of complex historical, social, economic, and political practices. The richness of their accomplishments emerges with compelling clarity in this book, in which African filmmakers speak candidly about their work. Featuring interviews with key personalities from twelve nations, Questioning African Cinema provides the most extensive, comprehensive account ever given of the origins, practice, and implications of filmmaking in Africa. Speaking with pioneers Med Hondo, Souleymane Cissé, and Kwaw Ansah; renowned feature filmmakers Djibril Mambéty, Haile Gerima, and Safi Faye; and award-winning younger filmmakers Idrissa Ouedraogo, Cheick Oumar Sissoko, and Jean-Pierre Bekolo, N. Frank Ukadike identifies trends and individual practices even as he surveys the evolution of African cinema and addresses the politics and problems of seeing Africa through an African lens. Situating the unique achievement of each filmmaker within the geographic, historical, social, and political context of African cinema, he also explores questions about acting, distribution and exhibition, history, theory and criticism, video-based television production, and television's relationship to independent film. N. Frank Ukadike is associate professor of film and of African and African diaspora studies at Tulane University.
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Electronic Monuments
Gregory Ulmer
University of Minnesota Press, 2005
While corporations, governmental groups, and public relations firms debated the best way to memorialize the event of 9/11, sites of commemoration could be seen across the country and especially on the Internet. Greg Ulmer suggests that this reality points us to a new sense of monumentality, one that is collaborative in nature rather than iconic. 

From a do-it-yourself Mount Rushmore to an automated tribute to the devastating annual toll of traffic deaths in the United States, Electronic Monuments describes commemoration as a fundamental experience, joining individual and collective identity, and adapting both to the emerging apparatus of “electracy,” or digital literacy. Concerns about the destruction of civic life caused by the society of the spectacle are refocused on the question of how a collectivity remembers who or what it is. 

Ulmer proposes that the Internet makes it possible for monumentality to become a primary site of self-knowledge, one that supports a new politics, ethics, and dimension of education. The Internet thus holds the promise of bringing citizens back into the political equation as witnesses and monitors. 

Gregory L. Ulmer is professor of English and media studies at the University of Florida, Gainesville.
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Student Self-Support at the University of Minnesota
James Umstattd
University of Minnesota Press, 1932
Student Self-Support at the University of Minnesota was first published in 1932. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.This volume reports the results of an investigation conducted under the University Committee on Educational Research. Dr. Umstattd found that 55 per cent of the students enrolled in the University of Minnesota were earning a part or all of their college expenses. His book is a study of the means used by students to support themselves while in college, the employment services rendered by the university, types of students earning their way, amount of money earned, relationship between students and employers, and effect of self-support on scholastic standing, college activities, health, and various other factors.
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Sigurd and His Brave Companions
A Tale of Medieval Norway
Sigrid Undset
University of Minnesota Press, 2013


Inspired by tales of the hero Vilmund Vidutan and his fellow knights, Sigurd Jonsson and his young friends Ivar and Helge set out to reenact these exploits on their medieval Norwegian farm. They carve swords and lances and spend hours making shields. With a little imagination, a pasture becomes a battlefield, an old boar their greatest foe, and they pass many hours jousting and dueling. But when the summer is nearly over, the three boys stumble into real trouble and must prove their courage in an adventure all their own.


Written during Sigrid Undset’s time in New York, Sigurd and His Brave Companions will make medieval Norway come alive for young and old readers alike.


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True and Untrue and Other Norse Tales
Sigrid Undset
University of Minnesota Press, 2013


A selection of Norwegian folktales chosen by Sigrid Undset, True and Untrue and Other Norse Tales is based on the classic folklore collected by Pieter Christian Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe. These wonderful stories tell of worlds similar to our own, worlds with love and hate, sorrow and joy, humor and pathos. Beginning with brothers named True and Untrue, the book takes readers through tales of princes and princesses, giants and trolls, husbands and wives, and a castle that is “East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon.” Strikingly illustrated by Frederick T. Chapman while under fire in Italy during the Second World War and with a remarkable foreword by Undset, True and Untrue and Other Norse Tales has a story for everyone.

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Olav Audunssøn
III. Crossroads
Sigrid Undset
University of Minnesota Press, 2022

The third volume in the Nobel Prize–winning writer’s epic story of medieval Norway, finely capturing Undset’s fluid, natural style in the first English translation in nearly a century
 

In the early fourteenth century, Norway is a kingdom in political turmoil, struggling with opposing forces within its own borders and drawn into strife with neighboring Sweden and Denmark. Bloody family vendettas and conflicting loyalties sparked by the irrepressible passion of a boy and his foster sister (also his betrothed) have now set in motion a series of terrible consequences—with a legacy of betrayal, murder, and disgrace that will echo down through the generations. Crossroads, the third of Olav Audunssøn’s four volumes, finds Olav heartbroken by loss and further estranged from his son. To escape his grief, Olav leaves his home estate of Hestviken and agrees to serve as captain on a small merchant ship headed to London. There, separated from everything familiar to him, Olav begins a visionary journey that will send him far into the forest and deep into his soul. Questioning past decisions and future plans, Olav must grapple with his own perceptions of love and guilt, sin and penitence, vengeance and forgiveness. 

Set in a time and place where royalty and religion vie for power, and bloodlines and loyalties are law, Crossroads summons a powerful picture of Northern life in medieval times, as the Swedish Academy noted in awarding Sigrid Undset the Nobel Prize in 1928. Conveying both the intimate drama and epic sweep of Olav’s story as grief and guilt drive him to ever more desperate action, Crossroads is a moving and masterly re-creation of a vanished world tainted by bloodshed and haunted by sin and retribution. 

As with Kristin Lavransdatter, her earlier medieval epic, Undset immersed herself in the legal, religious, and historical documents of the time while writing Olav Audunssøn to create astoundingly authentic and compelling portraits of Norwegian life in the Middle Ages. And as in her translation of Kristin Lavransdatter, Tiina Nunnally does full justice to Undset’s natural, fluid prose, in a style that delicately and lyrically conveys the natural world, the complex culture, and the fraught emotional territory against which Olav’s story inexorably unfolds.

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Olav Audunssøn
IV. Winter
Sigrid Undset
University of Minnesota Press, 2023

The fourth and final volume in the Nobel Prize–winning writer’s epic of one man’s fateful life in medieval Norway

 

Set in thirteenth-century Norway, a land racked by political turmoil, bloody family vendettas, and rising tensions between secular powers and an ascendant church, Sigrid Undset’s spellbinding masterpiece now follows the fortunes of Olav Audunssøn to the final, dramatic chapter of his life as it unfolds in Winter, the last volume of the tetralogy. When the orphaned Olav and his foster sister Ingunn became betrothed in their youth, a chain of events was set in motion that eventually led to violence, banishment, and a family separation lasting years. The consequences fracture their marriage and threaten the lineage for generations. Now, at the end of his life, Olav continues to grapple with the guilt of his sins as he watches his children, especially Eirik, make disastrous choices and struggle to find their rightful place in a family haunted by the past.

 

With its precise details and sweeping vision, Olav Audunssøn summons a powerful picture of Northern life in medieval times, as noted by the Swedish Academy in awarding Undset the Nobel Prize in 1928. Conveying both the intimate drama and the epic proportions of Olav’s story at its conclusion, Winter is a moving and masterly recreation of a vanished world tainted by bloodshed and haunted by sin and retribution—yet one that might still offer a chance for redemption. 

 

As with Kristin Lavransdatter, her earlier medieval epic, Sigrid Undset wrote Olav Audunssøn after immersive research in the legal, religious, and historical writings of the time to create an astoundingly authentic and compelling portrait of Norwegian life in the Middle Ages. And as in her translation of Kristin Lavransdatter, Tiina Nunnally does full justice to Undset’s natural, fluid prose—in a style by turns plainspoken and delicately lyrical—to convey the natural world, the complex culture, and the fraught emotional territory against which Olav’s story inexorably unfolds.

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Identity Papers
Contested Nationhood in Twentieth-Century France
Steven Ungar
University of Minnesota Press, 1996

Identity Papers was first published in 1996. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

What does citizenship mean? What is the process of "naturalization" one goes through in becoming a citizen, and what is its connection to assimilation? How do the issues of identity raised by this process manifest themselves in culture? These questions, and the way they arise in contemporary France, are the focus of this diverse collection.

The essays in this volume range in subject from fiction and essay to architecture and film. Among the topics discussed are the 1937 Exposition Universelle; films dealing with Vichy France; François Truffaut's Histoire d'Adèle H.; the war of Algerian independence; and nation building under François Mitterrand.

Contributors: Anne Donadey, Elizabeth Ezra, Richard J. Golsan, Lynn A. Higgins, T. Jefferson Kline, Panivong Norindr, Shanny Peer, Rosemarie Scullion, David H. Slavin, Philip H. Solomon; Florianne Wild, .

Steven Ungar is professor of cinema and comparative literature at the University of Iowa and author of Scandal and Aftereffect: Blanchot and France since 1930 (Minnesota, 1995). Tom Conley is professor of French at Harvard University.

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Seven Modern American Poets
An Introduction
Leonard Unger
University of Minnesota Press, 1967

Seven Modern American Poets was first published in 1967. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

This volume provides concise critical introductions to seven of the most important twentieth-century American poets, bringing together in convenient book form the material from some of the University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers. The poets discussed and the contributing authors are Robert Frost by Lawrance Thompson, Wallace Stevens by William York Tindall, William Carlos Williams by John Malcolm Brinnin, Ezra Pound by William Van O'Connor, John Crowe Ransom by John L. Stewart, T.S. Eliot by Leonard Unger, and Allen Tate by George Hemphill.

Biographical information about the poets as well as critical discussions of their work is provided. A selected bibliography for each poet lists his works and critical and biographical writing about him.

In an introduction Mr. Unger, who is one of the editors of the pamphlet series, discusses the poets and their place in the development of modern American poetry. Mr. Unger is a professor of English at the University of Minnesota and the author of a number of critical works, including T. S. Eliot: Moments and Patterns.

Teachers, librarians, and others who use the material of the University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers for frequent reference or as classroom texts will find this book particularly useful. It serves also as an excellent guide for the general reader.

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T.S. Eliot - American Writers 8
University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers
Leonard Unger
University of Minnesota Press, 1961

T.S. Eliot - American Writers 8 was first published in 1961. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

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Grocery Activism
The Radical History of Food Cooperatives in Minnesota
Craig B. Upright
University of Minnesota Press, 2020

A key period in the history of food cooperatives that continues to influence how we purchase organic food today

Our notions of food co-ops generally don’t include images of baseball bat–wielding activists in the aisles. But in May 1975, this was the scene as a Marxist group known as the Co-op Organization took over the People’s Warehouse, a distribution center for more than a dozen small cooperative grocery stores in the Minneapolis area. The activist group’s goal: to curtail the sale of organic food. The People’s Warehouse quickly became one of the principal fronts in the political and social battle that Craig Upright explores in Grocery Activism. The story of the fraught relationship of new-wave cooperative grocery stores to the organic food industry, this book is an instructive case study in the history of activists intervening in capitalist markets to promote social change.

Focusing on Minnesota, a state with both a long history of cooperative enterprise and the largest number of surviving independent cooperative stores, Grocery Activism looks back to the 1970s, when the mission of these organizations shifted from political activism to the promotion of natural and organic foods. Why, Upright asks, did two movements—promoting cooperative enterprise and sustainable agriculture—come together at this juncture? He analyzes the nexus of social movements and economic sociology, examining how new-wave cooperatives have pursued social change by imbuing products they sell with social values. Rather than trying to explain the success or failure of any individual cooperative, his work shows how members of this fraternity of organizations supported one another in their mutual quest to maintain fiscal solvency, promote better food-purchasing habits, support sustainable agricultural practices, and extol the virtues of cooperative organizing. A foundational chapter in the history of organic food, Grocery Activism clarifies the critical importance of this period in transforming the politics and economics of the grocery store in America.

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At The Beach
Jean-Didier Urbain
University of Minnesota Press, 2003

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Metaculture
How Culture Moves through the World
Greg Urban
University of Minnesota Press, 2001

It is one thing to comprehend how culture makes its way through the world in those cases where something old is reproduced in the same physical shape-where, for example, a song is sung or a story retold. It is another thing altogether, as Greg Urban demonstrates, to think about cultural motion when something new is created-a new song or a new story. And this, the creating of new culture, is the overarching value of the contemporary world, as well as the guiding principle of the capitalist entrepreneur.  

From the Declaration of Independence to the movie Babe, from the Amazon River to the film studio, from microscopic studies of the words making up myths and books to the large-scale forces of conquest, conversion, and globalization that drive history, Urban follows the clues to a startling revelation: "metaculture" makes the modern, entrepreneurial form of culture possible. In Urban’s work we see how metaculture, in its relationship to newness, explains the peculiar shape of modern society and its institutions, from the prevalence of taste and choice to the processes of the public sphere, to the centrality of persuasion and hegemony within the nation.

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