Rutgers hosts conference on "Imagining America"
Archived article from Oct 24, 2005
By Patricia Lamiell
In keeping with its tradition of cooperating with the communities it serves, Rutgers hosted the fifth annual national conference of “Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life,” a consortium of 70 colleges and universities that promotes campus-community partnerships in the arts, humanities and design. More than 180 scholars in the arts and humanities from around the country gathered Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 in New Brunswick to share many diverse efforts to encourage collaboration among academics, artists, community nonprofit groups and government organizations across the country. They explored how the academy could better serve surrounding communities through collaborative efforts.
“Artists are a critical link between the academy and the community,” said Isabel Nazario, associate vice president for academic and public partnerships in the arts and humanities, who led Rutgers’ organizing efforts across the New Brunswick, Newark and Camden campuses. “The visual, literary and performing arts contribute greatly to liberal learning and to the needs of diverse communities. They create new ways of looking at the world, engage the public about social concerns, examine aesthetic ideas and help convey complex emotions.”
In welcoming remarks, President Richard L. McCormick said, “Across the university we are developing initiatives that are inherently collaborative and interdisciplinary, and are aimed at strengthening diversity. Through these efforts we are all endeavoring to realize Rutgers’ goal of dynamic diversity because we recognize that diversity and academic excellence are inseparable.”
A keynote address by John Kuo Wei Tchen, director of Asian/Pacific/American studies at New York University, recommended ways in which scholars can theorize from the experiences of immigrants and the underclass and respond to their needs – for example, finding an analytical framework in which to discuss immigrants’ experiences and identifying resources for addressing concerns. A panel titled “Faculty as Transformative Agents” led by Nora Hyland, a Rutgers’ Bildner Fellow in education, discussed the role of faculty as change agents in leading and supporting efforts to increase diversity in academic institutions.
A panel discussion led by Clement Price, professor of history at Rutgers-Newark, titled “The Resonance of Public Scholarship,” brought together community individuals who had participated in projects developed by the Rutgers Institute on Ethnicity, Culture and the Modern Experience, which Price founded and heads. Scott Harris, a state trooper, eloquently shared what he had learned about the social construction of difference and the cultural complexities of urban life in workshops with the institute.
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