Presentation: Imagining America

Please join us for a presentation by Imagining America director Erica Kohl-Arenas about public humanities and arts. The event will take place at 10:00 AM in the McCune Conference Room and will include audience discussion.

Imagining America (IA) is currently based at UC Davis, its third host campus, as of July 2017. Comprised of a network of college and university members and community partners, IA’s annual programming includes convening a national conference and cultural organizing institutes, and collaborative research and action projects.

IA contributes resources to an expanding membership; offers opportunities for undergraduate and graduate student leaders, including the Publicly Active Graduate Education (PAGE) network, an annual cohort funded by IA that acts as a incubator for scholarly writing, innovative thinking, and bold experimentation; and provides significant leadership to the field of engaged scholarship in higher education, as evidenced in Public: A Journal of Imagining America, IA’s peer-reviewed, multimedia e-journal focused on humanities, arts, and design in public life.

Erica Kohl-Arenas is the faculty director of Imagining America and serves on the UC Davis faculty as Associate Professor in the Department of American Studies. Kohl-Arenas brings extensive experience as a cultural organizer and public scholar with deep knowledge of the national landscape of community engagement and organizational and social movement studies; she reflects on the current importance of public scholarship and IA’s new chapter in a Q&A with the UC Davis Humanities Institute. Previously, Kohl-Arenas was a member of the faculty of the Milano School of International Affairs, Management, an­d Urban Policy at The New School in New York City. Kohl-Arenas was the inaugural recipient of The New School’s Achievements in Social Justice Teaching Award in 2014, and also received The New School Distinguished University Teaching Award in 2016.