Author Archives: emteska

Announcing the New Call for Proposals: Our Second Issue

We are pleased to announce the theme for the second issue of Public: A Future-Oriented Democratic Revival. Like the first issue, this issue is linked to Imagining America’s annual conference, this year in Syracuse New York, from Oct 4-6, 2013. Submissions to the journal do not need to be directly connected to conference submissions, and anyone is encouraged to submit to Public, whether they submitted to the conference or not. The submission information is contained in the Call for Submissions link on the journal site, and the submission link will become active when the submission window opens on August 15th, 2013.

Public Call for Proposals announced: volume 1, issue 1

We’re pleased to circulate the call for our very first issue and a description of our submission process, both now posted at public.imaginingamerica.org. We hope you will share both with your colleagues and consider proposing something yourself.

If you are interested in contributing, don’t hesitate to be in touch by email. Since this will be our first issue on a new platform, we are exploring the possibilities of what this e-journal can be so we seek the participation of contributors. Within the context of the call, let me know what you have in mind as regards not only subject matter but also number of pages of text, number of photos, length of time-based work, something interactive, or some combination thereof. We’ll be accepting submissions between 1/15 and 2/15 in the new year. Details to follow.

at the Pregones Theatre

One of my favorite parts of IA conferences are the visits to sites where partnerships between faculty students and people in cultural and community-based organizations take place. I was part of the visit to Pregones Theatre in the Bronx this year. Artistic director Rosalba Rolon, along with Ping Chong of the company of the same name (celebrating its 40th anniversary), and Kevin Bott of the Dream Freedom Revival, shared expansive conceptions of for whom and for what they make theatre, each in various relationships with colleges and universities. Rolon shared her vision of Circle of Scholars, Circle of Artists in rich and reciprocal exchange. Carol Brzozowski, arts presenter at Syracuse University (SU), described the joys and challenges of collaborating with the local Congolese community with Ping Chong in the creation of Cry for Peace, about that country’s troubled history and efforts toward reconciliation now, whose opening run at Syracuse Stage was seen by 3,000 students. Bott laid out his hybrid job as Imagining America’s associate director at SU, which includes 20% of his time earmarked to develop this theatre project.

All three directors profoundly identify with a larger than typical “theatre crowd” with whom they work. Pregones has a strong neighborhood base in the Bronx (Rosalba: “we don’t talk about communities because we know these people; we talk about them by their names!”) and equally strong relationships with other theatre companies around the world. Chong described his own experience as an outsider, from an immigrant family, drawing him to the Undesirable Elements series, a 20- year exploration of works created with and performed by people who experienced their own stories of outsiderness. Kevin Bott felt isolated in his new geographic community of Syracuse, NY, until he researched local history of the underground railroad and tent revivals to create a Dream Freedom revival, a tent show whose religion is democracy, with new friends and neighbors who also wanted to stand up and sing, dance, and speak out.

Dancing the Theory through Performance

A poem floats into a room as introduction. We sit in a circle unsure who is presenter, who is audience.

 

“She’s dancing on beer cans and shingles…”

“Don’t tell nobody. Don’t tell a soul. Are we animals? Have we gone crazy.”

“Somebody. Anybody. Sing a black girl song.”

 

Five voices of doctoral students and professor weaving metaphors and dancing consonants and sharing images of Black girls and contradiction and hope and fear and language disrupting and challenging the expectation of a paper with a theory and stacks of evidence.  I suspect this session will be different.

 

Porshe Garner begins with a personal narrative about her work with SOLHOT, a space to celebrate Black girls in Champagne, Illinois. She speaks to us:

“SOLHOT requires that I love and forgive. That I know God. That I hear and not just what I want to hear…”

 

Durrell Callier recites a layered poem expressing the tensions, the joy, the theories embedded in his work:

“This work is dirty work…”

“I’m a person. Damn. Sometimes even I forget that…”

“1-800-call up your ancestors…”

“Perform research. Be personal. Dare to insert your narrative. That work is downright dirty…”

“This work is dirty work where many are called and few are chosen…”

 

Dominique Hill dances. She reaches long arms into the room and gives energy and breath and expresses with her body the narratives of struggle and hope and history and love and identity. Her body shares more than a 20 page, double spaced, white paper ever could. “I know what it feels like to give until empty. To begin again. To begin again…“

Following the five poetic presenters, we engage in a passionate, thought provoking conversation about the inspiring and challenging work of running afterschool spaces for girls that become research sites. Spaces where practice comes first and theory erupts from the stories girls tell about their days.  The researchers discuss the tension between writing research about the girls in the space without sharing the work with them. When offered the books written about them, the girls don’t take them, don’t read them. They are not expressing any interest in hearing about the theory or the scholarship built from their bodies and voices.

 

The presenters reflected upon the personal struggles this work demands of them. They bravely and honestly shared stories about being men and women of color taking risks to create “nontraditional” work that might impact their future job prospects or tenure.  They expressed the need to continue to do the work that is impacting girls’ lives as well as creating knowledge for the academy.

 

collaboration and crisis

How do colleges and universities collaborate with cultural and community-based organizations in this period of crisis in both sectors? Marta Vega, conference co-chair, president of the Caribbean Cultural Center, noted how overdue is a shift in our thinking and language regarding campuses as parts of communities, rather than faculty/ students “going out to” communities. Conference co-chair Randy Martin of NYU trenchantly explained that the question is not if these sectors are linked but rather by what terms this linkage must be approached. Nonprofits were meant to be a third space, neither government nor business, where the public good could thrive. But tax exemptions have eviscerated the public sphere, providing the most perks for those who need them least (such as tax breaks for mortgages). The wealthy people that tax exemptions benefit don’t think of themselves as receiving government benefits. It’s the poorest who are marked as government dependent and the rich who have recouped what was public money and actually decide the agenda of nonprofits through what they fund. How does higher education respond to the crisis so many non profit organizations face, organizations that increasingly form a component of student learning and have always been a source of faculty research and knowledge production? And what about how and who is admitted to our colleges and universities, the conference theme curated by Susan Sturm of Columbia U, the third conference chair? How do we achieve full participation? Why are campus units that focus on diversity often siloed away from those who carry out “engagement?”

Welcome!

Welcome to our public announcement of Public! We encourage you to comment, leave questions (or answers!), or make suggestions on any of the material published on this site.