About Imagining America's Upcoming Conference

Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life
with
The University of Washington

Present the Eleventh Annual Imagining America Conference

Convergence Zones: Public Cultures and Translocal Practices

Seattle, Washington
Thursday, September 23 - Saturday, September 25, 2010

CLICK HERE to view our conference page for details

Site Visits for the 2010 National Conference
Seattle, Washington
Friday, September 24th

Mr. Geoduck Publishing: Collaborative Storytelling and Editorial Theater

Location:
826 Seattle
www.826seattle.org

Description:
826 Seattle, one of eight 826 national chapters, is a nonprofit writing and tutoring center dedicated to helping youth, ages 6-18, improve their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. This site visit will introduce participants to 826 Seattle by asking them to write a story—original and interesting enough to satisfy a grouchy publisher, and on deadline, too!—as a group and as individuals. Facilitated by 826 Seattle volunteers, including a real-time illustrator, this workshop teaches participants about collaboration, self-editing, bookmaking, and elements of successful storytelling. Post workshop reflections will engage questions of voice, power, context, creativity, relationship, and joy in the teaching of writing across different spaces.

Organizers, Collaborators, and Discussants:
Teri Hein, Executive Director, 826 Seattle
Jared Leising, Founding Faculty, Cascadia Community College
Alice Pedersen, Assistant Director, Expository Writing Program and Doctoral Student, English, University of Washington Seattle
John Giordano, Boston-area Artist and Writer
Elizabeth Tannen, Graduate Student, Creative Nonfiction, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
Jessica Ketcham Weber, English Faculty, Cascadia Community College

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Community Media as Participatory Arts Practice

Location:
911 Seattle Media Arts Center
http://www.911media.org/

Jack Straw Productions
http://www.jackstraw.org/

Description:
Jack Straw Productions and 911 Seattle Media Arts Center have supported independent media arts in Seattle since 1962 and 1985 respectively. Both located in the Jack Straw Foundation building, 911 (which focuses on digital visual arts) and Jack Straw (which focuses on audio arts) both offer education programs, artistic residencies, distribution networks, screenings, and installations, as well as working with various organizations and communities to create community media. The site visit will kick off with a hands-on experience with participatory media tools (still cameras, flip video cameras, audio recorders) and introduce participants to free and user-friendly software (including comic life, google maps, and others). Participants will then create short media pieces, reflect on how their production experiences might inspire partnerships in community media in their own locations, and participate in a roundtable on the history and practice of community media with practitioners on local and national levels.

Organizers, Collaborators, and Discussants:
Ron Krabill, Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington Bothell
jeskiah maria ross, Founding Director, Art of Regional Change, University of California Davis
Carole Fuller, Chairperson of the Board, 911 Seattle Media Arts Center
Joan Rabinowitz, Executive Director, Jack Straw Productions, Seattle
Georgia Roberts, Doctoral Candidate, English, University of Washington Seattle
Angelica Macklin, Coordinator, Digital Media Lab, University of Washington Bothell

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Tecnología de Cedro: Fandango as Technology for Community Building and Social Activism.

Location:
UW Seattle campus

Description:
Fandango jarocho is a four-hundred-year-old tradition from Veracruz, Mexico that involves music, dance, and poetry born from encounters between European, Indigenous, African, and Arab cultures. In the 1970’s El Nuevo Movimiento Jaranero began to reclaim and transform the tradition, a movement which continues today and has expanded to the U.S. among Chicano, Mexican, and Latino immigrant communities. The Seattle Fandango Project (SFP) engages fandango musicians from California and Mexico with local organizations, university students, faculty, and the greater community to expand this translocal practice through participatory music. This discussion/demonstration will explore its history; how communities are using it to cultivate human connection across ethnic, geographic, socioeconomic, gender and generational differences; and how SFP has transformed spaces within the University of Washington. This session will also provide opportunity for learning the steps and protocols of zapateado (dance).
Conference participants are also invited to attend the regular fandango workshop at El Centro de la Raza on Saturday, September 25, 12-2pm, to learn the basic music, dance, and verse protocols and to interact with the SFP community. There will also be a Fandango del Mes Saturday night at a local community venue.

Organizers, Collaborators, and Discussants:
Francisco Orozco, Fandanguero and Ph.C. in Ethnomusicology, University of Washington
Martha Gonzalez, Doctoral student, Women Studies, University of Washington, singer and percussionist for East L.A.’s Quetzal
Kristina Clark, Dancer and community member
Carrie Lanza, MSW, Doctoral student, Social Welfare, University of Washington
Quetzal Flores, Community organizer, founder of East L.A.'s Quetzal
Teresita Bazan, Community organizer
Max Sizmore, Community organizer
Eduardo Sierra, Fandanguero
Iris Viveros – Bailadora, educator, interpreter
Hunter Family, James Kessler, Arturo & Trish Montano, Luis Martinez, Workshop participants

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Engaging Immigrant Community in Neighborhood Place-making: Community-University Partnership in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District

Location:
IDEA Space
Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority
http://www.scidpda.org/what_we_do.php?id=21

Description:
Since 2002, the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Washington has worked with local community organizations in Seattle’s International District to engage a predominantly non-English speaking, immigrant community in planning and design through participatory workshops, intergenerational activities, and informal open house events. This site visit will begin at IDEA Space, a newly established community design and resource center, and tour selected project sites throughout the International District, to introduce participants to these collaboration that have resulted in park and streetscape improvement as well as enhanced capacity and efficacy among local residents and community groups in the design and planning process. Presentations will introduce participants to the background, process, and issues faced in the community-university partnership. The visit will conclude with an activity that engages participants in the ongoing planning and design of the community.

Organizers, Collaborators, and Discussants:
Jeff Hou, Chair and Associate Professor, Landscape Architecture, University of Washington, Seattle
Joyce Pisnanont, Manager, IDEA Space
Ching Chi Chan, Studio Coordinator, IDEA Space
Rob Corser, Architecture, University of Washington, Seattle

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Participatory Mapping: Engaging Sites, Mobilizing Knowledges

Location:
UW Seattle campus

Description:
Building on the organizers’ experiences with mapping projects undertaken with middle-school youth and college students, this site visit explores site-making through multi-sensory and multi-modal forms of participatory mapping. Using the university itself as a site for engagement and a series of imaginative prompts, participants will experiment with various modes of data collection (documenting observations in words, sketch maps, photographs, video and audio clips) and presentation (Google Maps and geo-blogging mashups). Participants will experience participatory mapping as a curious and serendipitous exploration of public spaces, a creative platform for catalyzing new modes of public engagement, a critical tool facilitating the co-production of knowledge and interrogating the spatial intersectionalities of culture, politics, technology, and the social. The workshop will be framed by reflections on the use of these critical and creative modalities in curricular and collaborative projects from a variety of field perspectives.

Organizers, Collaborators, and Discussants:
Sarah Elwood, Associate Professor, Geography, University of Washington Seattle
Matthew W. Wilson, Assistant Professor, Geography, Ball State University.
Jin-Kyu Jung, Assistant Professor, Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, University of Washington Bothell
Josef Eckert, Doctoral Student, Geography, University of Washington Seattle
Ryan Burns, Doctoral Student, Geography, University of Washington Seattle

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Building Community-based Digital Civil Rights History Projects

Location:
UW Seattle campus

Description:
Since 2004, the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project (http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/) has demonstrated how a digital public history project can make a substantial impact on the community it serves and on the university that hosts it. Like similar projects underway in other cities, notably the March on Milwaukee Civil Rights History Project (http://www.marchonmilwaukee.org/) , these sites support and generate oral histories, documentary archives, and original research, as well as public dialogue and education, engaging multiple participants and audiences, including community groups, journalists, K-12 educators, and public officials. This site visit will focus on the design and implementation of community-based digital history projects, from technical challenges – like designing websites and editing video oral histories – to project challenges like locating and working with community groups and integrating digital history into coursework to facilitate student research and publication. A roundtable discussion will discuss new approaches and examine the challenges and benefits of community-based digital history projects.

Organizers, Collaborators, and Discussants:
James N. Gregory, Director of SCRLHP, Harry Bridges Endowed Chair of Labor Studies and Professor of History, University of Washington
Jasmine Alinder, Director of the March on Milwaukee Civil Rights History Project and Associate Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Jack Dougherty, Coordinator of the ―On the Line‖ Digital History Project and Associate Professor of Educational Studies, Trinity College
Matthew Countryman, Director Arts and Citizenship Program and Associate Professor of History and American Culture, University of Michigan
Trevor Griffey, co-founder SCRLHP
Jessie Kindig, Associate Editor, SCRLHP
Maria Quintana, Associate Editor, SCRLHP
Oscar Rosales Castaneda, Communications Co-Chair, El Comite Pro-Reforma Migratoria Y Justicia Social
Ellen Engseth, Archivist, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries
Krystyna Matusiak, Digital Collections Librarian, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries
Trevor Berman, undergraduate student, History Department, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

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Putting Activism on the Table: Sovereignty, Sustainability, and the Ethics of Eating

Location:
UW Seattle campus, University of Washington Farm http://students.washington.edu/uwfarm/

Description:
Founded in 2004, the UW Farm educates the university community about the global impacts of our food choices by providing a model for reducing those impacts. Through hands-on activities, site visit participants will learn about the practices that maintain the UW Farm as a live classroom and an extracurricular place for community-building among student farmers, members of the University, and community organizations; its growth as a tool and venue for teaching ecologically sustainable food practices; and its incorporation into curriculum design across campus. Participants will be asked to engage in an open forum discussion with community collaborators to share expertise and ideas about campus-community cooperation, curriculum development, and educational initiatives around the ecological impact of food choices and sustainable urban agriculture

Organizers, Collaborators, and Discussants:
Ann Anagnost, Professor, Anthropology, University of Washington Seattle Nina Arlein, Student Farm Director, University of Washington Seattle Edward Hill, Director, Creatives 4 Communities Teresa Mares, Doctoral Student, Anthropology, University of Washington Seattle Sue McGann, Marra Farm Coordinator, Lettuce Link Program of Solid Ground Jason Niebler, Director, Sustainable Agriculture Education Program, Seattle Central Community College Laura Niemi, Program Development Manager, Seattle Tilth Jennifer Ruesink, Associate Professor, Biology, University of Washington Seattle Trang Ta, Doctoral Student, Anthropology, University of Washington Seattle Elizabeth Wheat, Doctoral Student, Biology, University of Washington Seattle

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Recreating Place: Between Environments Arts and Environmental Science

Location:
UW Bothell campus, UW Bothell Wetlands Restoration http://www.bothell.washington.edu/admin/wetlands/history-of-the-wetlands

Description:
The fifty-eighty acre UW Bothell wetlands restoration is the centerpiece of the campus. This site visit will explore how the setting for a campus can become a convergence zone for public culture, translocal practices, and – migratory birds! Participants will explore how natural, and not so natural, campus environments might generate productive collaborations across disciplines and sectors, and foster innovations in research and teaching in the environmental arts and humanities. By participating in two teaching modules that demonstrate different methods for spurring scholarship, connection to place, and artistic production using the landscape as text and inspiration, participants will get an overview of our interactions with the largest restored wetland in Washington state, and have an opportunity to reflect on the application of these curricular and collaborative projects in their own areas.

Organizers, Collaborators, and Discussants:
Robert Turner, Assistant Professor, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington Bothell
Amy Lambert, Doctoral Student, Forest Resources, University of Washington Seattle
Kathryn Byrd, Professor, English/Humanities, South Puget Sound Community College
Mike Gillespie, Emeritus Professor, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington Bothell
Chris Mangialardi, Wetlands Lead, Facility Services, University of Washington Bothell

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Making Race Visible in the Age of Color Blindness
Please note: this site visit requires an additional $17.95 in registration fees to offset the cost of the neighborhood tour.

Location:
Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience
http://www.wingluke.org/home.htm

Description:
Located in Seattle’s Chinatown/International District, the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience (The Wing) is the only museum in the United States devoted to documenting and exhibiting the historical and contemporary experiences of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. This site visit will introduce participants to The Wing and focus on how we might produce and cultivate public knowledge on race when mainstream discussions of race tend to stress how America has moved beyond race. A panel featuring museum curators and directors and scholars will reflect on the complexities and challenges of addressing race forty years after student and community activism generated Ethnic Studies courses and faculty positions, community-based organizations and cultural institutions, and collaborations and alliances between higher education and local communities of color. The site visit will include a tour of The Wing’s galleries and a neighborhood tour of the Chinatown/International District.

Organizers, Collaborators, and Discussants:
Moon-Ho Jung, Walker Family Endowed Associate Professor of History, University of Washington, Seattle
Cassie Chinn, Deputy Executive Director, Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience
Josh Heim, Exhibits Developer, Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience
Matthew Frye Jacobson, Professor of History, American Studies, and African American Studies, Yale University
Jessie Ryker-Crawford, Chair of Museum Studies, Institute of American Indian Arts
Beth Takekawa, Executive Director, Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience
John Kuo Wei Tchen, Co-founder, Museum of Chinese in America and Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University
Barbara Earl Thomas, Visual Artist and Executive Director, Northwest African American Museum