Call for Panels, Workshops, Proposals: Imagining America Conference

Posted by on March 26, 2007

Please find below the full CFP of Imagining America’s annual national conference. If you have any questions, go to http://www.ia.umich.edu or contact me at julietf@umich.edu.

Imagining America: Artists And Scholars In Public Life
Seventh Annual National Conference

Citizenship For A Just World:
Activating Knowledge, Cultivating Engagement

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Friday, September 7 ? Saturday, September 8, 2007
Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York

IA Member Institution Representatives and PAGE Fellows meet Thursday, September 6. Registration and lodging information will be sent out in June and posted on the IA website, http://www.ia.umich.edu.

Conference Theme
For public scholarship to flourish, it must engage with a wide range of possible communities. Publicly engaged scholars in the arts, humanities, and design work with communities made up of scholars, teachers, students, and staff on local campuses. They also collaborate with nearby partners who work in the public, nonprofit, and private sectors. Yet many individuals in the globalizing communities that we work with are themselves newcomers to our local environment or recently arrived from lands afar. Increasingly, the meaning of public scholarship means engagement with regional and national communities in efforts to tackle social and cultural issues on broader scales. We need to create new kinds of citizenship and public engagement that have no fixed geographic boundaries but still contain responsibilities to specific communities located around the world. For a fully just society to emerge from our work, we need to learn from new models of citizenship and scholarship in action.

As Imagining America moves to its new location in Syracuse, New York, we invite scholars, artists, and those involved in public engagement to discuss the forms of collaboration and kinds of knowledge that emerge from our work. Bridging campus and community requires us to consider different aspects of citizenship and its responsibilities. How can we create pathways to knowledge from our public practice and intellectual projects that foster new collaborations in a globalizing world? Join us to consider these matters and others at the eighth national conference for Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life.

We solicit submissions of proposals for seminars, roundtables, workshops, and panels (see descriptions below) on partnerships and projects touching on these topics:

Citizenship: How do we make public scholarship a pathway to work on citizenship? How does the creation of a just and democratic society depend upon an ample, inclusive vision of citizenship? What intellectual projects and practical doorways allow us to tackle issues that are most important to academic and non-academic communities alike?

For a Just World: How do we build the public engagement movement? How do we strengthen its connections to colleges and universities and reach people from every community? How do we address the increasingly international character of many of our communities? How do we develop greater national and international networks of collaboration and exchange?

Activating Knowledge: How do we make knowledge collaborative, collective, and active? What diverse kinds of knowledge do partnerships generate? What are the practical opportunities and challenges of sharing expertise? How are academics and non-academics changed by these interactions?

Cultivating Engagement: How can our cultural collaborations help to invigorate individuals and societies? How is social justice served by a flourishing, dynamic culture? How do our events and performances reach out to greater audiences? How do we encourage excellence in our artistic and cultural projects?

Session Formats: Seminars, Roundtables, Workshops, and Panels
All conference sessions are one and a half hours in length, and should take one of the following formats. Audio-visual equipment will be provided on-site; presenters should bring any presentation material on a jump (thumb) drive that fits into a USB port. Information about poster sessions follows at the end of this Call for Proposals.

Seminars
Seminar participants submit an unpublished work or works: for example, a brief “position paper” (5-7 pages), or a video or slide-show. The works will be made available one month prior to the conference on the IA website, and hard copies of papers made available at the conference itself. During the seminar, the leader moderates a discussion about the piece. We intend that these seminars generate immediate exchange of ideas and conversation, assist these works towards publication, and produce networks of scholars who continue to work together beyond the conference. While a single public scholar may submit, we encourage submissions from collaborative and cross-institutional groups. We request that only those who have previously familiarized themselves with the work under discussion attend the seminar.

Seminar proposals should include a title for the seminar; the contact information of the seminar leader; the work(s) or paper(s) to be discussed; A/V equipment needed; and a four-to-five sentence description of the issues and questions that will be raised in discussion.

Roundtables
Roundtables gather a group of participants around a shared concern in order to generate discussion among the roundtable participants and with the audience. To this end, instead of delivering standard conference-length presentation, participants typically deliver short position statements (5-10 minutes) in response to questions distributed in advance by the organizer, or they take turns responding to prompts from the moderator. The bulk of the session should be devoted to discussion. Roundtables should be limited to no more than five participants, including the organizer. We encourage roundtables involving participants from different institutions, centers, and organizations.

Proposals for roundtables should include a title for the roundtable; the organizer’s name, title, and contact information; the names and titles of the proposed roundtable participants; A/V equipment needed; and a 3-4 sentence description of the position statements, questions, or debates that will be under discussion.

Workshops
Workshops will have a facilitator who sets the agenda, poses opening questions, and organizes the activities for the participants. The facilitator will be responsible for gathering responses and results from the participants and/or small groups, and helping everyone digest and integrate them into their thinking. Proposals to conduct workshops should propose not only the facilitator and topic, but also the activities that will be conducted

For example, in a workshop on “Public History of the Suburbs,” the facilitator would describe the topic and give some opening remarks (5 minutes). She might then break the audience into groups and ask each group to brainstorm a list of five key principles for organizing a community partnership. After 15 minutes, a reporter from each group would then give the results, typically written by the facilitator on a chalk board or easel. Then it’s time for critique and second stage, for example, moving on to typical obstacles, resource challenges, and so forth. We intend that this process produce substantive and useful conclusions to all participants.

Workshop proposals should include a title for the workshop; the organizer’s name, title, and contact information; A/V equipment needed; and a 4-5 sentence description of the topic or issue that will be under discussion.

Panels
Panels will take the format of a team or individuals presenting their work and experiences, leaving at least a full half-hour for questions and inclusive discussion. Before submitting a panel, we urge you to consider whether your proposed subject matter could be adapted to one of the previous formats.

Panel proposals should include a title for the panel; the organizer’s name, title, and contact information; the names, titles, and affiliations of all panelists; A/V equipment needed; and a 4-5 sentence description of the panel’s topic.

The Deadline and Destination for Conference Proposals

Send all proposals in electronic format only to Esther Gray, Special Assistant for Academic Affairs, at eegray@syr.edu, by April 15, 2007. The Selection Committee will respond to proposals by May 1, 2007. Registration information will be sent out at the beginning of June as well.

Poster Presentations
Often, our conference attendees are part of wonderful partnerships or are conducting research projects that don’t fit well with the annual theme or the issues driving the conference sessions. We offer the opportunity to present these projects in a poster or table-top format, a display of your project or research. Such a display is usually a mixture of a brief narrative description, intermixed with photographs, organizational or historical charts, maps, and other presentation formats. You may have brochures or hand-outs available for distribution, or use your laptop to display a presentation or DVD. Viewers should be able to view a poster presentation about a project and understand its significance without its author being present. We will, however, designate a time in the conference program for presenters to attend their display and meet interested people, answer questions, and talk about your work.

Presentation space is limited to conference participants and to projects that involve public scholarship in the arts and humanities, or work that engages Imagining America’s research and policy agenda. A project may be at any stage of development. As always, there will be table space available participants who simply want to distribute information or display publications.

To submit a proposal for a poster presentation, please send a brief description of your project and how it will be displayed to Juliet Feibel at julietf@umich.edu by April 15, 2007. She will respond by May 15, 2007. You may request a full table of 3 by 5 feet or ask for half of a table. Space is limited: if you do not require an entire table, we would appreciate you requesting only half. We will take the liberty of consolidating smaller displays if need be. We are not able to provide A/V equipment or electrical points for table top displays.