The Imagining America consortium (IA) brings together scholars, artists, designers, humanists, and organizers to imagine, study, and enact a more just and liberatory ‘America’ and world. Working across institutional, disciplinary, and community divides, IA strengthens and promotes public scholarship, cultural organizing, and campus change that inspires collective imagination, knowledge-making, and civic action on pressing public issues. By dreaming and building together in public, IA creates the conditions to shift culture and transform inequitable institutional and societal structures.
Imagining America is pleased to announce the open search for the next Faculty Director. Imagining America will be hosted by Penn State University, starting July 1, 2027, and the Faculty Director will be a key leader in launching IA at Penn State and leading the next chapter of the national consortium. Read on for more information and share widely in your networks!
In 2025, IA launched six new collaboratories, welcoming emergent partnerships and new communities of practice to form in areas of shared interest among IA members and partners in the broader IA network. Five of these collaboratories completed their projects and shared back via blog posts over the last few months. We gather these report backs here for ease of access.
Imagining America is pleased to announce the open search for the next Faculty Director. Imagining America will be hosted by Penn State University, starting July 1, 2027, and the Faculty Director will be a key leader in launching IA at Penn State and leading the next chapter of the national consortium. Read on for more information and share widely in your networks!
+ Imagining America Announces Open Search for Next Faculty Director
This IA Collaboratory is organized by professors Jacqueline Jean Barrios and Harris Kornstein (Public & Applied Humanities, University of Arizona), and each virtual event features guest speakers in a salon-style conversation with attendees. This month’s featured speakers are Brandi Locke (Just Transformations Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, The Center for Black Digital Research, Penn State University, University Park), Amallia Orman (Student Voice Manager at the NYC Department of Education), and Judy Pryor-Ramirez (Clinical Associate Professor of Public Service, NYU Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and IA National Advisory Board member).
This IA Collaboratory is organized by professors Jacqueline Jean Barrios and Harris Kornstein (Public & Applied Humanities, University of Arizona), and each virtual event features two guest speakers in a salon-style conversation with attendees. This installment’s featured speakers are Sylvia Fernández Quintanilla (Assistant Professor of Public and Digital Humanities at the University of Texas at San Antonio) and Lili Flores Aguilar (Associate Director of the Markings/Huellas project at UCLA cityLAB).
Annual convening of public scholars, artists, designers, students, and cultural organizers addressing today’s pressing issues.
IA is proud to share that Pennsylvania State University is the next campus home for Imagining America, starting July 1, 2027. Learn more about this intentional cycle of transition for IA.
IA fosters vibrant networks of graduate and undergraduate students from our member institutions.
IA’s research initiatives and learning opportunities leverage the intellectual and creative capital that is the consortium’s greatest strength.
We envision a world of expansive social imagination, constructed by multiple ways of knowing, where people work together to nurture healthy, vibrant, and joyful communities.
The Imagining America consortium (IA) brings together scholars, artists, designers, humanists, and organizers to imagine, study, and enact a more just and liberatory ‘America’ and world. Working across institutional, disciplinary, and community divides, IA strengthens and promotes public scholarship, cultural organizing, and campus change that inspires collective imagination, knowledge-making, and civic action on pressing public issues.
By dreaming and building together in public, IA creates the conditions to shift culture and transform inequitable institutional and societal structures.
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Funding has been provided by California Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.
