The 2025 IA National Gathering in Review

In partnership with New Mexico State University and a local Steering Committee, Imagining America created a joyful and restorative IA National Gathering in Las Cruces, New Mexico. From October 3-5, 2025, over 450 registered attendees participated in activities on the theme of Providing Passage: Practicing the Worlds We Want. 

The program featured over 100 speakers across 70 concurrent sessions that highlighted critical community engaged research projects, artmaking activities, participatory workshops, and media screenings. Registrants represented over 150 different institutions from 34 states (in the U.S. and Mexico), including 374 attendees from Imagining America member campuses. If your institution is not already a member of IA, join now! 

We want to recognize New Mexico State University who registered over 200 members of their campus! Other IA member campuses brought teams to enjoy the gathering together, including Emory University (9), University of Richmond (9), University of Arizona (8), University of New Mexico (8) University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign (7), Macalester College (6), Michigan State University (6), Portland State University (6), Towson University (6), University of California, Davis (6), and University of North Carolina, Greensboro (6).

The 2025 IA National Gathering included an IA 25th Anniversary track representing the good work across IA’s distributed networks from current IA Collaboratories and ongoing research initiatives, the Publicly Active Graduate Education (PAGE) fellows, and special sessions from The IA Clearing. Weaving together lessons from Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Sekou Sundiata’s The America Project, The IA Clearing featured an IA Makerspace, a listening station, a community mapping activity, and a series of Magical Questions on paper airplanes to foster community dialogue. We celebrated the 2025 Randy Martin Spirit Award (RMSA) recipient Terri Bailey, Publicly Active Graduate Education (PAGE) Fellows and IA/Joy of Giving Something Foundation (JGS) Undergraduate Fellows at the Friday evening reception and recognized David Hoffman (UMBC) as the 2026 RMSA recipient. 

The IA National Gathering provided multiple spaces and mediums for deepening understanding of the Paso del Norte region, the geographic cultural area that includes the cities of Las Cruces, NM; El Paso, TX; and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. The opening plenary began with a vibrant performance from the NMSU Ballet Folklorico y Mariachi Orgullo de Nuevo Mexico, and a blessing and welcome from members of Tortugas Pueblo, led by Cacique Patrick Nevarez. The opening program included remarks from NMSU President Valerio Ferme, who presented IA with a tapestry woven by the NM Heritage Wool Project commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Imagining America National Gathering. “You [Imagining America] decided that it was time to think of the arts and humanities, but also of the cultural expressions of our people, more broadly, more extensively, more expansively,” Ferme said …

“So, you looked ahead and opened a passageway for new generations of scholars and learners to step into the opening and see what new vistas could be experienced by re-imagining the arts and humanities in the public sphere… You renewed an old commitment of the traditional arts and humanistic values to rethink themselves more broadly as public goods, as transformative enterprises that, in turn, can guide us to a better understanding of ourselves. Something that is sorely needed in this day-and-age.”

Valerio Ferme

President, New Mexico State University

The opening continued with colleagues from the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez (UACJ) sharing a visual poem reflecting on lived experience and ecology of the borderlands with the work of UACJ students and faculty. Marisa Sage, curator of the NMSU Art Museum, moderated a conversation between the 2025 IA National Gathering visual artist Citlali Delgado and her father Francisco Delgado, both artists with deep ties in the Paso del Norte region. After participants learned about The IA Clearing from IA Board Members David King and Judy Pryor-Ramirez, everyone took part in a celebratory procession to the NMSU Corbett Center, which was the primary venue for the gathering.

Las Cruces and NMSU were featured throughout the gathering program, including at six community hosted site visits at the Las Cruces Museum System, Tortugas Pueblo, the Fabian Garcia Research Center and Chile Pepper Institute Teaching Garden, the Fountain Theatre and plaza of Mesilla, NM, a multi-sited experience of the arts at New Mexico State University, and a walking tour of historic Las Cruces. A Sunday post-gathering experience, Along the River and to the Wall Detour, was organized by NMSU faculty and gathering co-lead Cynthia Bejarano. Following historic Highway 28 along critical agricultural landscapes and the Camino Real Route, the detour stopped at Doña Ana Community College (DACC) for a panel discussion, and ended at the unique Ardovino’s Desert Crossing Italian family restaurant for dinner and a creative reflection moment to “speak to the wall.”

The closing plenary focused on the diversity of voices in higher education institutions who provide passage (the gathering theme) for the communities and regions they serve and how creativity and imagination are central to the work of practicing the worlds we want. Stories from The IA Clearing were shared over the speakers, paper airplanes flew through the theatre, and 10 different leaders from the IA network shared their ideas and inspirations for the worlds we want. The inaugural Julie Ellison Vision Award was announced in honor of IA’s first Faculty Director, under whose leadership the PAGE Fellows program launched in 2003 and expanded through the organized efforts of community-engaged graduate student fellows in the arts and humanities from IA member institutions. The first award was given to Queer Black Feminist Love Evangelist and an aspirational favorite cousin to all life, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, who was a PAGE Fellow during her time at Duke University.

We are thankful to our partner New Mexico State University and collaborators in the Paso del Norte region who received us with gracious hospitality and to all participants who shared time, space, and learning with us. Imagining America thanks the generous sponsors who supported the IA National Gathering including the American Council of Learned Societies, GivePulse, University of Miami Office of Civic Engagement, Doña Ana Community College, the City of Las Cruces, the City of Davis Arts & Cultural Affairs program, NMSU offices and colleges, and many individual donors supporting community registrations.

Stay informed about the fall 2026 IA National Gathering in Davis, California through the IA mailing list!