Each year, PAGE asks Fellows to submit a few readings that have informed the practical and theoretical aspects of their own engaged scholarship. Many of those readings, and others, can be found in the resource archive list below.
Please help us build our resources by sending the books, articles, or media that is important to your work by sending them to Adam Bush at asbush@gmail.com.
Introduction to Civic Engagement and Public Scholarship
This is a perfect first stop for those new to Imagining America or just beginning to think of their projects in terms of engaged scholarship. The below readings can help to define terms like Public Scholarship, Arts, and Engagement, and work to highlight contemporary debates about the meaning, purpose, and value of “public scholars” or “public intellectuals.” Talking through these terms in relationship to our individual projects as well as (briefly) the work of scholars like W.E.B. DuBois, Paulo Freire, and John Dewey, we will touch upon major areas of civic engagement for academics, including performance studies, public sociology, and urban studies, and how positioning our work through this lens of engagement in graduate school can help us successfully navigate these disciplines allow our projects to flourish.
Questions to Consider:
- What is civic engagement as it relates to higher education?
- How is it different from other types of scholarship?
- What do you need to know before you begin engaging with community partners?
- What are the implications of pursuing such work in regard to writing a thesis or dissertation, to publishing, or to thinking about career trajectories inside and outside of the academy?
Suggested Readings:
- Nancy Cantor and Steven Lavine, “Taking Public Scholarship Seriously,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 9 June 2006.
- David Scobey, “Putting the Academy in Its Place,” Place 14:2 (Spring 2002), pp. 50-55.
- Dixon, Chris and Alexis Shotwell. “Leveraging the Academy: Suggestions for Radical Grad Students and Radicals Considering Grad School.” Online at Monthly Review:
- George J. Sanchez, “Crossing Figueroa: The Tangled Web of Diversity and Democracy,” Forseeable Futures, working papers from Imagining America (Fall 2005)
Understanding, Initiating and Maintaining Successful Partnerships
How can graduate students work best with faculty and community partners in building community in the arts, humanities and design? These readings are geared toward helping understand best practices in developing and maintaining ongoing partnerships with community leaders and university constituents. They address how to create effective and transformative community-academy partnerships balanced by one’s own practical needs and degree requirements as a doctoral student, as well as ways to navigate challenging power dynamics, partner accountability, and methods for fostering and maintaining supportive partnerships in publicly-engaged projects.
Suggested Readings:
- Avila, Maria. “Academic and Community Engagement at Occidental College: a model based on relationality and stakeholders’ ownership of, and participation in the implementation of the model.” Unpublished paper.
- Ellison, Julie and Sarah Robbins. “Specifying the Scholarship of Engagement: Skills for Community-based Projects in the Arts, Humanities, and Design.” A report prepared for Imagining America.
- Koch, Cynthia. “Making Value Visible: Excellence in Campus-Community Partnerships in the Arts, Humanities, and Design.” A report prepared for Imagining America, with a forward by Julie Ellison.
- Community Tool Box, on Understanding Culture and Diversity in Building Communities (Feel free to browse this entire site – so much helpful information on community building.) http://ctb.ku.edu/en
Scholar-Activism and Activist-Scholars
At the center of deciding to invest in civic engagement is a desire to integrate our graduate work with our community commitments. In the hustle and bustle of organizing, writing papers, and developing projects there is rarely an opportunity to reflect on what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and how others have done it before us. These readings discuss the meanings, implications, challenges, and opportunities involved in scholar-activism.
Questions to Consider:
- What are different ways of envisioning scholar activism?
- What impact do we carry with us as PhDs in off-campus community settings?
- How can we leverage university resources to benefit our community partners?
Suggested Readings:
- Pulido, Laura. “FAQs: Frequently (Un)Asked Questions about Being a Scholar Activist.” In Engaging Contradictions: Theory, Politics, and Methods of Activist Scholarship. Ed Charles R. Hale. University of California Press.
- Massey, Doreen. When Theory Meets Politics. Antipode. Vol. 40 No. 3. P. 492-497. 2008
- Mitchell, Don. Confessions of a Desk-Bound Radical. Antipode Vol. 40 No. 3. Pg. 448-454. 2008
Publicly Engaged Scholarship and the Arts
As critics and theorists debate whether or not “community-based art” should be judged by its artistic and aesthetic merit or its efficacy as a social “service,” how do we, as artists and scholars working collaboratively and with communities, evaluate the successes of our own projects? Should we be the ones to evaluate the work? Should it be left to the critics? Or should the voices and opinions of the community participants be most important? How do we evaluate arts/work, especially in the context of the academy, which has its own set of expectations?
These readings discuss creative, personal, ethical, and political challenges in community-engaged scholarship in the arts, and issues and challenges related to arts-based community scholarship.
Suggested Readings:
- “Criticism” from Cohen-Cruz, Jan. Local Acts: Community-Based Performance in the United States. Routledge: New Brunswick, 2005.
- Sloan, David. “An Ethic of the End,” www.communityarts.net 2008.
- Amin, Takiyah Nur. “Developing Partners: Inside Three Arts Organizations,” www.communityarts.net 2004.
Other Readings
- Cantor, Nancy. Imagining America; Imagining Universities: Who and What? Welcome Address: Imagining America Annual Conference, Syracuse University. 7 September 2007.
- Cohen-Cruz, Jan. “When the Gown Goes to Town: The Reciprocal Rewards of Fieldwork for Artists.” Theatre Topics. 11. 1 (March 2001): 55-62
- Dixon, Chris and Shotwell, Alexis. “Leveraging the Academy: Suggestions for Radical Grad Students and Radicals Considering Grad School.”
- Halttunen, Karen. ”Groundwork: American Studies in Place – Presidential Address to the American Studies Association, November 4, 2005.” American Quarterly – Volume 58.1 (March 2006): 1-15.
- Jeffries, Lynn, Rauch, Bill, Valdez, Mark, & Atlas, Caron. “The Faith-Based Theatre Cycle Case Study: Cornerstone Theater Company.”Animating Democracy: Reading Room Case Studies.
- Prince-Ramus, Joshua. “Talks Joshua Prince-Ramus: Designing the Seattle Central Library.”
- Sanchez, George J. “Crossing Figueroa: The Tangled Web of Diversity and Democracy.” Foreseeable Futures #4, Working Papers from Imagining America. (Fall 2005).
- Smith, Andrea. “Social-Justice Activism in the Academic Industrial Complex.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. 23. 2 (2007): 140-144.
- Stern, Lynn E. “Public Faces, Private Lives: Making Visible Silicon Valley’s Hybrid Heritage.” Animating Democracy: Reading Room Case Studies.