Citizenship For A Just World: Activating Knowledge, Cultivating Engagement

Posted by on July 9, 2007

Imagining America National Conference Schedule Available Now

Citizenship For A Just World: Activating Knowledge, Cultivating Engagement
Friday, September 7 – Saturday, September 8, 2007

Consortium Members, the National Advisory Board and PAGE Fellows meet
Thursday, September 6

Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York

The theme of the seventh Imagining America conference addresses the challenges of public scholarship that demands engagement with regional and national communities. Our efforts to bridge campus and community require the creation of new kinds of citizenship and public engagement that have no fixed geographic boundaries but still respond to specific communities located around the world. The topics of our sessions will include-among others–a full-immersion undergraduate residency in Cincinnati; the regional conversations and educational work that responded to the Onondaga Land Rights Actions; turning artists and humanists into elected officials, promoting cultural citizenship in Los Angeles; the role of university humanities centers in fostering publicly-engaged arts and scholarship; the contradictory value systems involved in community arts partnerships; and pedagogies required by teaching arts and humanities in prison.

Interactive seminars will focus tightly on works-in-progress, both academic and non-academic. Workshops will offer participants an opportunity to identify common issues in preparing students for engaged cultural work and in fostering citizenship through K-12 partnerships. One session, facilitated by scholar Randy Martin and performance artist Karen Finley solicits projects from conference registrants in advance to spur a dialogue and discussion on what happens as artistic work becomes part of public debate and civic participation. Speakers and presenters also include Nancy Cantor, Chancellor of Syracuse University; Bryan Bell, Founder and Executive Director of Design Corps; George Sanchez, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, USC; Pam Korza, Co-Director of Animating Democracy, and Rosemary Feal, Executive Director of the Modern Languages Association.

The conference reception will take place at The Warehouse, a Dunk & Bright furniture warehouse that has been renovated to serve as an experience-based learning laboratory for architecture and design students. This remarkable historical renovation also serves a recognizable symbol of Syracuse University’s enhanced presence in downtown Syracuse.

A full program, lodging information and on-line registration may be found by visiting http://www.imaginingamerica.org and going to the conference page.

You may also contact Juliet Feibel at 315.416.2929.