How the Arts and Humanities Are Transforming America
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Extraordinary Partnerships HOW THE ARTS AND HUMANITIES ARE TRANSFORMING AMERICA Edited by Christine Henseler Copyright © 2020 by Christine Henseler Lever Press (leverpress.org) is a publisher of pathbreaking scholarship. Supported by a consortium of liberal arts institutions focused on, and renowned for, excellence in both research and teaching, our press is grounded on three essential commitments: to publish rich media digital books simultaneously available in print, to be a peer-reviewed, open access press that charges no fees to either authors or their institutions, and to be a press aligned with the ethos and mission of liberal arts colleges. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, California, 94042, USA. The complete manuscript of this work was subjected to a partly closed (“single blind”) review process. For more information, please see our Peer Review Commitments and Guidelines at https://www.leverpress.org/peerreview DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11649046 Print ISBN: 978-1-64315-009-3 Open access ISBN: 978-1-64315-010-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2019954609 Published in the United States of America by Lever Press, in partnership with Amherst College Press and Michigan Publishing To the next generation of artists and humanists. To my daughter, Leah. The arts and humanities defne who we are as a people. That is their power—to remind us of what we each have to ofer, and what we all have in common. To help us understand our history and imagine our future. To give us hope in the moments of struggle and to bring us together when nothing else will. —Michelle Obama Contents Member Institution Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Humanities Rising: How the World Is . and Might Be 1 Christine Henseler PART I: TOWARD A COMMON HUMANITY Creating Space, Context, and Moment Chapter One: Lessons from the Launch of Portals 25 Amar C. Bakshi, Multidisciplinary Artist Chapter Two: When Art Lives as Culture 37 Kim Cook, Director of Creative Initiatives for Burning Man Chapter Three: Toward a New Paradigm: Public Art and Placemaking in the Twenty-First Century 51 Christina Lanzl, Director of the Urban Culture Institute Chapter Four: Circus as Transformation: Musings on the Circus Arts as Agent and Medium for Change 73 Charles Batson, Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Union College Chapter Five: Speaking the Unspeakable: Integrating Science, Art, and Practice to Address Child Sexual Abuse 89 Rebecca Volino Robinson, Claudia Lampman, Brittany Freitas-Murrell, Jennifer Burkhart, and Amanda Zold, Professors and graduate students of Psychology Chapter Six: Storytelling for the Next Generation: How a Nonproft in Alaska Harnessed the Power of Video Games to Share and Celebrate Cultures 103 Cook Inlet Tribal Council, Tribal Non-proft Organization in Anchorage, Alaska Chapter Seven: Telling Stories Diferently: Writing Women Artists into Wikipedia 119 Amy K. Hamlin, Professor of Art History at St. Catherine University Chapter Eight: Poster Dreams: The Art of Protest and Social Change 137 Ella Maria Diaz, Professor of English and Latino Studies at Cornell University Chapter Nine: Hablamos Juntos: Together We Speak 159 Betsy Andersen, Executive Director of Museo Eduardo Carrillo, and Julia Chiapella, Executive Director of the Young Writers Program Chapter Ten: Humanizing American Prisons 177 Margaret Graham, University Director for Academic Afairs at the University of Rochester PART II: TOWARD A BROADER HUMANITY Expanding Partnerships and Shifting Paradigms Chapter Eleven: The Humanities Biosphere: New Thinking for Twenty-First Century Capitalism 193 Susan M. Frost, President of Frost Marketing Communications, Inc. and Associate Lecturer, University of Wisconsin–Green Bay viii Contents Chapter Twelve: Money over Meaning: Tech Is Winning Minds but Not Hearts 207 Bailey Reutzel, Financial Technology Writer Chapter Thirteen: Hit Me Where It Hurts: The Intersection of Theater and Climate Change 215 Chantal Bilodeau, Playwright, Translator, and Research Artist Chapter Fourteen: Body of Water: Merging Biology and Dance to Reach New Communities 233 Jane Hawley and Jodi Enos-Berlage, Professors of Visual and Performing Arts and Biology at Luther College Chapter Fifteen: Afro-Latin America on STEAM 267 Doris Sommer, Professor of Romance Studies at Harvard University and Founder of the NGO Cultural Agents, with Antonio Copete, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Chapter Sixteen: Why Science Is Not a Recipe: Expanding Habits of Mind through Art 281 Madeleine Fuchs Holzer, Educator in Residence at the Academy of American Poets, and Luke Keller, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Ithaca College Chapter Seventeen: Humanizing Science: Awakening Scientifc Discovery through the Arts and Humanities 299 Rebecca Kamen, Sculptor and Artist, and Professor Emerita at Northern Virginia Community College Chapter Eighteen: When an Engineer Tells a Story . 321 Ari W. Epstein, Lecturer in the Terrascope program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Elise Chambers; Emily Davidson; Jessica Fujimori; Anisha Gururaj; Emily Moberg; and Brandon Wang Contents ix Chapter Nineteen: Unlikely Partnerships: On Sociology and Art 343 Gemma Mangione, Lecturer in Arts Administration at Teachers College at Columbia University, and Consulting Analyst for RK&A EPILOGUE Two Birds with the Philosopher’s Stone: How the Humanities Will Redefne and Reinvigorate the Future of Work for Millennials 359 Julia Hotz, Communities Manager, Solutions Journalism Network List of Contributors 373 Index 393 x Contents Member Institution Acknowledgments Lever Press is a joint venture. This work was made possible by the generous support of Lever Press member libraries from the follow- ing institutions: Adrian College Denison University Agnes Scott College DePauw University Allegheny College Earlham College Amherst College Furman University Bard College Grinnell College Berea College Hamilton College Bowdoin College Harvey Mudd College Carleton College Haverford College Claremont Graduate Hollins University University Keck Graduate Institute Claremont McKenna College Kenyon College Clark Atlanta University Knox College Coe College Lafayette College Library College of Saint Benedict / Lake Forest College Saint John’s University Macalester College The College of Wooster Middlebury College Morehouse College St. Olaf College Oberlin College Susquehanna University Pitzer College Swarthmore College Pomona College Trinity University Rollins College Union College Santa Clara University University of Puget Sound Scripps College Ursinus College Sewanee: The University of the Vassar College South Washington and Lee Skidmore College University Smith College Whitman College Spelman College Willamette University St. Lawrence University Williams College xii MeMber InstItutIon ACknowledgMents INTRODUCTION HUMANITIES RISING How the World Is . and Might Be Christine Henseler The arts and humanities are entering a renaissance. Few would agree. The present picture looks grim. Enrollments are falling. Budgets are dropping. Public support is failing. At the dawn of 2020, the arts and humanities are going through a rough patch, with expansive repercussions.1 But the future can’t be captured by the state of the present. In transformational times, it is the glimpses we see on the horizon that come into focus when we begin to walk toward them. This book provides a small step toward a shared belief in the need for a humanistic turn, a leap and a jump—steeped in hope—toward a future that holistically applies artistic and humanistic principles to the making of a more inclusive, equitable, caring, and kind—yet no less productive and innovative—world community. The small step this volume takes is not unique, nor is it exclu- sive. But it is urgent. And it is everywhere. It is inspired by a long history of creative doers going as far back as the Renaissance. Frans Johannson called these periods “Medici efects”: moments in time that produce explosive breakthrough ideas that are both valuable to society and realized (14–15). During these creative junctures, individuals from diferent felds associated ideas in previously unimaginable ways. They challenged assumptions, questioned systems, and integrated bits from seemingly disparate felds. They do so again today. And their efects feel like the delightful unwrap- pings of desperately needed aha moments. Today, Medici efects are all around us. To recognize them, we have to expand how we see, where we look, and what we subse- quently do. What this book does is explicitly embrace and expose the very human complexities and constructive possibilities that unfold when we genuinely engage with our own and each other’s strengths and vulnerabilities, when we build from what I like to call the constructive tensions that arise when people from difer- ent walks of life come together. By extension, the personal tones enthusiastically adopted by the authors in this volume refect a need, a hunger, really, to reconnect to one another on deeply human levels. The voices you hear in this volume are of people telling their stories of social and cultural transformation, in their own registers and through their own perspectives.2 And, if you listen closely, you will hear them crying out, desperately calling to look beyond