We are thrilled to announce that Blair Ebony Smith is the new Director of Imagining America’s Central New York Publicly Active Graduate Education (CNY PAGE) initiative that seeks to build vibrant networks connecting engaged graduate students, faculty, and community partners in dynamic collaborations. Blair will also play a leadership role with the Imagining America Engagement Scholars program in Syracuse, which retains graduating students in Syracuse for another year of civic engagement. (more…)

The Center for 21st Century Studies (C21), a UW System Center of Excellence at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee campus, leads the way in imagining, defining, and creating the burgeoning field of 21st century studies, focusing on the intersection of the humanities, arts, and sciences (social and natural) with issues of compelling concern.

In collaboration with and under the general supervision of the Director of C21, the Deputy Director is responsible for planning and implementing seminars, lectures, and international conferences; coordinating overall communications and outreach strategy; assisting with planning and implementing external development campaign; working with the director to develop and implement strategies to expand and promote humanities and campus-wide transdisciplinary research collaborations; and leading and overseeing the day-to-day activities of the Center.

Seee the full posting and apply: https://jobs.uwm.edu/postings/13293.

In this themed edition on questions of aesthetics and participation, RiDE seeks contributions to debates about audience and participation and about the ways that notions and practices of aesthetics and reception affect notions and practices of participation, or provoke the existence of participatory work in the first place.

In November 2010, RiDE published a themed edition on the aesthetics of applied theater and performance. The editors and contributors developed a series of interventions into debates and discourses of aesthetics in applied theater practice. Following on from this work, and from the publication of Claire Bishop’s Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (2012), RiDE would like to invite artists, educators, scholars, and cultural critics to participate in further debate.

This, then, is an invitation to engage in questions about the cultural value and artistic quality of applied and community performance, but specifically to relate the discussion to questions and problems of participation in theater, performance, and education. For the purposes of this discussion, RiDE might choose to think very broadly about participation, or even to ask questions that make more precise our use of the term.

RiDE is interested in hearing about the many works and projects that attempt to upset, blur, or otherwise confound the distinction between facilitator and participant. We are also keen to consider how notions and relations of education and learning contribute to the cultural or artistic value of participation. It also seems important to address the way that works are framed: how do notions of aesthetics, beauty, and art inform reception and production in participatory work?

To look at the question from another perspective, we can also ask how experiences of beauty and transcendence are communicated beyond the specific moment of performance in works that are primarily focused on participants. The working methods and aesthetic innovations of community work, for example, belong among the significant achievements of culture, and yet innovations often remain restrictively isolated and specific.

When making community or participatory performance, to what extent is it possible to think (only) of the audience? How might audiences prepare for the watching of this work? How do we develop an elaborated culture of reception for community and participatory art work? How do educators relate their own artistic practice and participation to debates around aesthetics and cultural value?

RiDE seeks proposals for work in the following forms:

• Scholarly articles of around 5,000 words;
• Review essays of works (performed and written) that have importance to this theme;
• Provocations and other accounts by practitioners;
• Interviews and dialogues between performance makers/practitioners; and
• Contributions that challenge or extend the possibilities for participating in this conversation.

As part of the development of conversations around this themed edition, there will be an invited symposium on 18th September 2013 at the University of Hull, UK. This symposium will be an opportunity to develop focused discussion on questions of aesthetics and participation. The symposium will give opportunity to develop arguments and ideas for the themed issue. Colleagues might wish to contribute to the symposium and also to the themed issue, or to one or other of these conversations.

RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance is a refereed journal aimed at those who are interested in applying performance practices to cultural engagement, educational innovation and social change. It provides an international forum for research into drama and theater conducted in community, educational, developmental, and therapeutic contexts. The journal offers a dissemination of completed research and research in progress, and through its Points and Practices section it encourages debate between researchers both on its published articles and on other matters. Contributions are drawn from a range of people involved in drama and theater from around the world. It aims to bring the fruits of the best researchers to an international readership and to further debates in the rich and diverse field of educational drama and applied theater.

Peer Review Policy: All research articles in this journal undergo rigorous peer review, based on initial editor screening and anonymised refereeing by at least two anonymous referees. All reviewers are internationally recognized in their field, and the editorial board of RiDE aim to support scholars from many different parts of the world.

Deadlines:

• Expressions of interest in Symposium: 30th July 2013
• Detailed abstracts: 1st November 2013
• Full drafts of articles: 1st February 2014

All enquiries and submissions should be sent to Colette Conroy, the editor of the themed edition: c.conroy@hull.ac.uk

An interview with Imagining America co-director Scott Peters has been published by The EvoLLLution, “[a] grassroots online newspaper exclusively for, and by, those who understand higher education best.” The interview is called “Imagining Land Grants 50 Years in the Future,” and discusses the current mission of land-grant universities and explains how their role will evolve in 50 years’ time.

The link above includes audio of the interview, and you can download a PDF copy by clicking here.

As part of their ongoing Discussion Series, The Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity (CSCRE) at Ithaca College is hosting a talk on Monday, March 18, by George Sanchez, an expert on ethnic interactions within communities. His talk, “The Power and Possibilities of Multiracial Communities: Bridges and Borders in Boyle Heights, California,” will be held at 7 p.m. in Emerson Suites, Phillips Hall. It is free and open to the public.

An award-winning scholar of Chicano history and immigration, Sanchez is the director of the University of Southern California Center for Diversity and Democracy as well as the vice dean for diversity and strategic initiatives and a professor of American Studies & Ethnicity and History in USC’s Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. He is also a member of Imagining America’s National Advisory Board.

Sanchez’s historical study of the ethnic interaction of Mexican-Americans, Japanese-Americans and Jews in the Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles demonstrated that multiracial communities could be established in a time of extreme racism, and that Boyle Heights set a standard by which other American cities could judge their own progress.

The series coeditor of American Crossroads: New Works in Ethnic Studies from the University of California Press, Sanchez is the author of Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900–1945. He is a former president of the American Studies Association and serves on minority scholars committees of the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association.

The CSCRE fosters dialogues on issues pertaining to race through its annual discussion series. The theme for this year’s series is “Suffocating Knowledge: Race, Power, Possibilities.” For more information, visit www.ithaca.edu/cscre.

Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact Claire Swensen at cswensen@ithaca.edu or 607-274-1056. They CSCRE asks that requests for accommodations be made as soon as possible.

Submissions are now being accepted through April 12 for the 2013 Imagining America national conference, A Call to Action, to be held in Syracuse, NY, October 4-6.

Please share the Call for Participation with colleagues, partners, and students. Also alert them to the opportunity to participate in one of three webinars IA will host to discuss and answer questions about the conference. These will be held on three consecutive Fridays—March 22, March 29, and April 6—and will be tailored to address the specific concerns of participants.

To sign up for the webinar, click here, or copy and paste the following URL into your browser:  http://www.formstack.com/forms/?1420798-adCt7IVuqo.

IA is encouraging session submitters to consider their work within a possible themed pathway, and to share the CFP with colleagues and partners who might submit to present a session that adds depth and dimension to conversations and actions about engagement within specific field and disciplines, or around particular issues and themes. As the CFP states, the ambitious conference goal “is to collectively develop and articulate a concrete and coordinated action plan — a plan we will commit ourselves to during the following year, drawing on the distinctive strengths and capacities of humanities, arts, and design fields.”

We envision the work performed within the themed pathways directly informing this larger goal.

Based at Syracuse University since 2007, and witness to the growth of Chancellor Nancy Cantor’s vision of Scholarship in Action, Imagining America is very excited to bring the national conference back to the city of Syracuse and to the Central New York Region. Here the “call to action” has been answered in myriad creative and engaging ways, even as it continues to sound. We hope you’ll join in what promises to be an energizing and galvanizing weekend this October.

I look forward to answering your questions and facilitating connections within our network.

Sincerely,

Kevin Bott
Associate Director

EVALUATION IN ACTION!

Arts practitioners and their community partners want to know:  What difference are we making? What can we do better to effect the social outcomes we want to achieve? How can we tell our story better? What information will be most powerful?  Answering these questions yields: More impactful work and more effective ways of working!  Recognition, resources, opportunity!

EVALUATION IN ACTION! webinars hone in on common evaluation challenges artists, arts organizations, and their community partners face.  These 90-minute webinars are offered by Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts and co-presented by M. Christine Dwyer of RMC Research with guest arts practitioners and evaluators.  Each offers specific stories, techniques or tools, along with conceptual frameworks to guide thinking and design.  This series will sharpen your evaluative thinking, and build confidence and can-do capacity in evaluation methods that produce meaningful, useful information!  EVALUATION IN ACTION! is supported by the Nathan Cummings, Lambent, and Open Society Foundations.  For details and to register, click here.

Linking Your Work to Outcomes
March 28, 2013, at 3:00 PM EST
Learn ways to substantiate links between your creative efforts and outcomes that can help you make the case to civic stakeholders for the value of arts in contributing to behavior, attitudes, and policy change. Featured story is Art At Work (AAW), a program in the City of Portland, ME.  Guest:  Marty Pottenger, Art At Work

Credible Qualitative Design & Analysis
April 18, 2013, at 3:00 PM EST
Qualitative information is important for indicating changes in issue awareness, attitudes, and shifts in the content and tenor of public dialogue. It can be key to describing the role, nature, and efficacy of aesthetic activity. Learn methods to summarize and analyze qualitative data; and how to combine it with quantitative information to communicate concise and compelling results. This webinar features the Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA) which evaluated the impact on public health and well-being of two of its signature community arts programs.  Guest: Amy Kitchener, Alliance for California Traditional Arts

Meaningful Numbers!
May 23, 2013, at 3:00 PM EST
Learn when numbers convey meaning better than words and what you can and should quantify!   Drawing on an evaluation of Detroit’s Mosaic Youth Theatre that assessed positive youth development outcomes such as community involvement and increased social capital, learn about selecting a sample for data collection, constructing credible surveys, making comparative analyses, and what constitute credible response rates.  Guests: Rick Sperling, Mosaic Youth Theatre and Lorraine Gutierrez, University of Michigan

Understanding Long-term & Cumulative Effects
June 27, 2013, at 3:00 PM EST
The social effects of arts programs often accrue after project timeframes or grant periods end and are often catalytic to other effects. Through stories of multiple projects, you’ll learn how to identify plausible precursors of long-term outcomes that can be measured in the short-term and sample visualizations that show ways of presenting your own cumulative, long-term, or invisible effects. Guest: TBA

Our friends at Citizen Alum are hosting a Summer Institute for campus teams to utilize alums as crucial partners in building multigenerational communities of active citizenship and learning. The Institute will take place June 11-12 in at the Jandris Center for Innovative Higher Education, University of Minnesota. More info:

“The institute is designed to support your work in 2013-2014, whether your team is just forming or already has key initiatives up and running.  Sessions will focus on planning with allies, connecting engagement and inclusion, and building our collective research capacity. The concluding session will be held jointly with the APLU Council on Engagement and Outreach, followed by a reception. Registration is $190/person. Registration will begin on March 1 but we invite you to email Citizen Alum Director Julie Ellison (jeson@umich.edu) with questions or to let us know of your interest.” For the agenda, click here (PDF).

IA Co-Director Scott Peters will be a speaker at the University of California-Davis as part of its “Provost’s Forums on the Public University and the Social Good.”

On Friday, February 22nd, from 3-6 p.m. in the Multi-Purpose Room (Student Community Center), there will be a half-day symposium entitled, “Making the ‘People’s University’: Exploring the Civic Mission of Public Land Grant Universities and Cooperative Extension.” This symposium is focused on questions surrounding the civic mission of land grant universities and what changes in university practices are needed to better fulfill this mission in the future, particularly in context of the the current crisis facing all public universities.

To explore these important topics we will be welcoming Lawrence Busch, Professor of Sociology, Michigan State University; Rose Hayden-Smith, 4-H Youth, Family and Community Development Advisor, UC Cooperative Extension; James Lapsley, Adjunct Associate Professor of Viticulture and Enology, UC, Davis; and Scott J. Peters, Professor of Cultural Foundations of Education and Co-Director of Imagining America, Syracuse University.

For more information: http://provost.ucdavis.edu/initiatives-and-activities/activities/future/index.html.

2013 Imagining America National Conference
October 4–6, 2013
Syracuse, New York

A Call to Action

Hosted by Syracuse University with Colleges and Community Organizations in the Region
Deadline: Friday, April 12

Conference Theme: A Call to Action

Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life’s 2013 conference in Syracuse, New York, builds on our 2012 conference, Linked Fates and Futures: Communities and Campuses as Equitable Partners. Designed as a call to action, our 2013 conference invites and challenges artists and scholars of many kinds to organize and engage in a democratic revival. A revival that’s prophetic rather than nostalgic, centered on the urgent work of imagining and creating a future that aligns with the deepest cultural and political ideals of a diverse people. A revival that invites and challenges campuses to be part of their communities. A revival that focuses our energy, time, and resources on positive possibilities pursued through a practical and productive politics, even while it also opens up and sustains a critical discourse about pressing public issues and problems. A revival that exemplifies and builds what Syracuse University Chancellor and President Nancy Cantor refers to as third spaces—open and public free spaces—where the work of democracy takes place.

Context

Syracuse, New York, is a city with powerful and progressive political and cultural traditions. Historically, the region was a cockpit for the struggle for abolition, women’s rights, civil rights, and the rights of indigenous peoples. It was also a center of the arts and crafts movement, and home to hundreds of well-known artists, writers, musicians, and innovators. Those traditions are still alive.

This year, Syracuse University and several other colleges and universities are joining with the Onondaga Nation of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederation and a community-based organization known as NOON (Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation) to mark the 400th anniversary of The Two Row Wampum Treaty, the first known formal agreement between the Haudenosaunee Nations and the European newcomers. The yearlong Two Row Wampum Renewal Campaign calls on the United States government and its citizens to honor the treaty. The campaign’s biggest public event is a 13-day canoe trip with Native People paddling side-by-side with allies and supporters down the Hudson River from Albany to New York City. Spiritual and cultural traditions will play an important role in this journey.

The partnership of the Haudenosaunee, NOON, and higher education is occurring in a third space, a space that can be both metaphorical and physical. By creating an inclusive environment that enables the full and authentic participation of all partners, third spaces intentionally leverage the capital of community-campus collaborators by helping unify academic and community knowledge. Such environments spark greater creativity, collaboration, and critical analysis.

Goal

In pursuit of Imagining America’s mission, the 2013 conference will be a space to cultivate strategies and alliances that reassert and claim not only higher education’s but everyone’s responsibilities and contributions to the work of building and sustaining a vital democratic culture. Our ambitious goal over the course of three days is to collectively develop and articulate a concrete and coordinated action plan—a plan we will commit ourselves to implement during the following year, drawing on the distinctive strengths and capacities of humanities, arts, and design fields. We will be weaving a critical discourse throughout the conference that examines the many ways of thinking about and acting within the public spaces where engaged art and scholarship occur. And we intend to infuse the entire conference with a spirit of revival that lifts and propels our energy and imagination.

Invitation to Participate 

We invite educators, students, artists, cultural workers, civic leaders, policy makers, funders, other concerned citizens and community members to develop sessions that point to the many possibilities for people to be agents of progressive, democratic change, and that illuminate the potential and challenges around key movements and themes. Imagining America seeks proposals from individuals and teams that present a strategy for engaging conference participants in one or more aspects of publicly engaged art and scholarship. These themes may include but are not limited to public humanities, community cultural development, public interest design, food justice, climate change, education, incarceration and reentry, urban connectivity and sustainability, and structural change within higher education.

Priority will be given to sessions that represent a range of initiatives and institutions. We strongly encourage individuals to use the proposal process as an opportunity for regional, national, and international organizing—connecting with colleagues and community partners to propose sessions that reflect diverse perspectives on a topic or theme.

Imagining America staff will facilitate additional connections among proposals once they are received. All accepted presenters must be willing to work with Imagining America to ensure that the session is integrated into the fabric of the entire conference and advances the conference goals.

Session Formats

Proposals for the 2013 national conference should take the form that best facilitates critical and dialogic exchange around the proposed topic. Sessions may take, but are not limited to, the following formats:

1. Seminar: An individual or team may lead a session with conference participants who have prepared in advance. Seminar proposals include strategies for pre-conference collaboration. We appreciate seminars with concrete goals for advancing work at the conference and/or for generating future collaborations among participants. After a limited number of seminars are selected, a call for participation will be announced on Imagining America’s website and listserv. Interested individuals will apply for admission to the session through the IA website. All confirmed participants will be included in the conference program as presenters.

Please note: Seminar leaders are responsible for convening participants, ensuring that they conform to expectations, and facilitating the session. Conference participants who have not prepared ahead of time but who are interested in the seminar will be welcome to audit.

2. Roundtable: Designed to generate discussion around a shared topic, issue, or action, roundtables begin with short statements (5-10 minutes) in response to questions distributed in advance by the organizer. The sessions are then largely discussion and feedback. Roundtables involving participants from different institutions, centers, and organizations are encouraged.

3. Workshop: A facilitator sets the agenda, poses opening questions, and organizes participant activities and discussions. The session can focus on specific skill development, problems, resources for higher education-community partnerships, or work and conversation on particular issues.

4. Performance and Dialogue: These sessions provide the experience of particular performance-based engagement methodologies or innovative models of engaged performance. Sessions must include ample opportunity for discussion and critique.

5. Media Session: The conference will include curated media screenings. We invite you to submit film, video, or audio clips, or excerpts from projects that utilize new media. Accepted submissions will be grouped and screened by themes and/or type of project. Sessions will be organized to allow for audience conversation with each presenter.

6. Poster: Conference attendees may present and solicit feedback on their existing and emerging projects by displaying a poster at a session dedicated to that format. Posters typically mix a brief narrative description with photographs, organizational or historical charts, maps, video, or other modes of presentation.

Deadline and Dates         

• The web portal for submitting proposals is open now! Click here to submit your proposal.
• The submissions deadline is Friday, April 12.
• Accepted seminars will be notified by Friday, April 26.
• Decisions on all sessions will be made by Tuesday, May 14.