Syracuse Initiatives

Welcome to the local pages of the Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life website.

In June 2007, Imagining America moved from the University of Michigan to Syracuse University (SU).  As part of our commitment to the national agenda and to our organizational host, we join our many local colleagues in enhancing SU as a model for excellent public scholarship and practice.  Supported by Chancellor and President Nancy Cantor’s vision of Scholarship in Action, we contribute our engaged arts and humanities practice to SU's development as an "anchor institution” in this city and region.

Imagining America has developed the following long-term local initiatives (click on the title for more information):

The Imagining America Grant, launched in the fall of 2007, supports new courses at SU that emphasize public scholarship and practice; benefit both some component of the community and SU students; demonstrate the likelihood of becoming sustainable; incorporate the arts, humanities, or design; and serve a democratic purpose (e.g., encouraging community participation around a relevant issue, helping solve a shared problem, or modestly contributing to neighborhood revitalization).

The Engagement Fellows one-year program supports a cadre of graduating seniors seeking employment in central New York and incorporates the principles of Scholarship in Action. Through our network of potential employers and provision of tuition remission and mentorship, the Engaged Fellows collectively explore how the many disciplines that they represent contribute to a more equitable revitalized region. For more information, visit http://engage.syr.edu.

The Chancellor's Leadership Project: Laboratory of Community, Arts, and Learning (LOCAL) explores how the arts contribute to local challenges. We are currently focusing on the need to re-infuse the city of Syracuse's downtown with energy and appeal given 50 years of population decrease. LOCAL also contributes to SU's Scholarship in Action, providing projects through which students learn hands-on from experts on campus and in the community.

Hosting Gatherings and Workshops is another function of Imagining America at Syracuse University. Recently, we hosted the New York Council on the Humanities and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Publicly Active Graduate Education at SU: SU’s Humanities Council is partnering with IA in support of publicly active graduate students in the Central New York Humanities Corridor, which includes Syracuse University, Cornell University, and University of Rochester.  With administrative help from SU’s Graduate School, we provide a workshop on public scholarship for SU students every spring.  For more information, contact kbott@syr.edu.

SU Courses that IA staff offer emphasize public scholarship and practice. (For a selection of such course descriptions and syllabi, click on the title.)

We invite you to learn more about our local projects by clicking on the links to the left. For more information about Syracuse Initiatives, contact imaginingamerica@syr.edu.