By Madeleine Neal, The Daily Iowan
Although immigration is among the issues at the heart of the current political discourse, it has been ingrained in Iowan culture since its earliest days.
A series of panels hosted by “WorldCanvass,” produced by the University of Iowa International Programs, discussed immigration on Wednesday evening in the Voxman Music Building.
The three-part series began with German Iowa and the Global Midwest, an October 2016 symposium held in the UI Obermann Center for Advanced Studies.
The symposium explored Iowa’s “multicultural” heritage.
H.G. Penny, a UI professor of history, said he wanted to think about ways to connect people nationally and internationally.
“Students just got us more excited about it,” he said. “[Students were] coming from all kinds of places.”
For Penny, it is fascinating that much of Iowa’s history is written in German.
“They [were] very much global citizens as well as citizens of Iowa,” he said.