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Dear IA Community,
We hope you had a restorative November, gathering with family and friends, and taking time to slow down as we approach the end of another solar cycle.
IA is pleased to share the artistic contributions created by participants from IA member institutions for the 2025 Mail Art Project (MAP) and invite contributions for 2026!
The 2025 Mail Art Project asked participants to reconnect with the corporeal body and consider how the natural treasures that exist in the margins of local neighborhood trails and parks could become the center of attention, intention, and creative process. View the submissions as a reminder of the power of place in fostering creativity, and the playful abundance that is always already open to us through nature and its material bounty.
The annual MAP creative activity is free to IA members - consider joining IA to participate if you are not already a member. The 2026 Mail Art Project takes inspiration from the 2025 IA National Gathering – Providing Passage: Practicing the Worlds We Want, which invited us to consider how to provide passage for one another and all beings towards a more just, liberatory, and caring future. Participants are invited to find grounding and inspiration from the following “magical questions” (Priya Parker, 2020) as they engage in community, creativity, and collage-making:
• What carries you?
• What is your place of peace? How do you get there?
• What practices help you imagine?
Please register by February 11, 2026 to receive your kit.
We hope you enjoy the creative contributions from the extended IA network as we wrap up the year, and we thank you for being part of a community committed to the IA value that creative culture is a site of liberation, and for demonstrating how collaborative creative culture-making brings people together in ways that foster empathy, joy, play, and connection.
With care,
Anuj Vaidya
IA Communications Director
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Community-Engaged Practice at James Madison University
James Madison University (JMU) has a long-standing commitment to community-engaged practice, and fosters opportunities for community and university collaborative engagement. In this month’s member spotlight, we learn about a few initiatives at JMU that advance these goals.
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| | The IA Open Forums, the JMU Arts Mobile, and the Madison Scholars Program (overseen by the Community Engagement and Volunteer Center) are some of the projects highlighted in the spotlight! | | | |
IA Announces 2025 Awardees: Alexis Pauline Gumbs and David Hoffman
Imagining America is pleased to announce that David Hoffman is the recipient of the 2025 Randy Martin Spirit Award, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs is the inaugural recipient of the 2025 Julie Ellison Vision Award. Please join us in celebrating the work and spirit of these dedicated community-engaged scholars, artists, organizers.
| | Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a writer, poet, culture worker, educator, and community archivist who has created a cultural movement towards a Black queer feminist love ethic and practices of collective study and care. As the inaugural recipient of the Julie Ellison Vision Award, she embodies Julie's visionary and compassionate commitment to justice, equity, and support of the next generation of public scholars. | |  | David Hoffman exemplifies Randy Martin’s generous, sincere, curious, and joyful spirit through his mentorship, original thinking, and institutional leadership. As a celebrated civic engagement leader with 22 years of transformative contributions at UMBC and in national organizations, he has had a positive influence in the lives of thousands of students and colleagues. | | |
California Native Plant Foods Celebration and Symposium
When: February 10, 7am-7pm PT
Where: UC Davis
This inaugural gathering will establish ethical frameworks for academic-Tribal partnerships, unified by the shared purpose of honoring Indigenous food sovereignty and traditional knowledge systems. Hosted by University of California, Davis Department of Plant Sciences, in collaboration with the Departments of Native American Studies and Nutrition, Native American Academic Student Success Center, and the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources.
REGISTER HERE.
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The Humanities Assessment Hub is live! This easy-to-use, searchable archive offers resources to help scholars, department chairs, and institutional leaders recognize the full range of humanities scholarship — including collaborative, digital, public-facing, and experimental work. Designed to strengthen tenure and promotion practices, the Hub provides practical tools for recognizing and assessing different kinds of scholarship.
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In the article Convergence Through Divergence (TU Magazine, 2025), Megan Bradshaw examines special interest groups at Towson University which are designed to exchange resources and information and build cross-discipline collaboration.
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Read the interview with IA Faculty Director Erica Kohl-Arenas who was recently featured in Public Humanities to highlight her perspectives as a public humanities practitioner. The interview examines how Kohl-Arenas first got involved in the public humanities, the challenges of working in the field, and her ongoing projects.
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CALL FOR JOBS: The Climate and Environmental Studies Program at Vanderbilt University, an IA member institution, is accepting applications for a non-tenure-track Mellon Assistant Professor (three-year term, 2-2 teaching load) whose research engages climate and environmental humanities. Applicants must have completed their Ph.D. between August 16, 2022 and August 1, 2026. in a climate and/or environmental humanities-related field. Deadline for submission is January 15, 2026.
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CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: The Department of Public & Applied Humanities at IA Member Institution the University of Arizona is seeking an experienced and dynamic Community Engagement Coordinator and Lecturer. This position will work in partnership with Department faculty, staff, and students to continue the cultivation and enhancement of a welcoming and collaborate environment for our students, alumni, and corporate and community partners. Application reviews begin on December 15, 2025.
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Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine (Chronicle Books, 2023) is written by Hannah Moushabeck who was a guest at the Tools for the Undercommons, IA Collaboratories public event in November 2025. With heartfelt illustrations by Reem Madooh, this story is a love letter to home, to family, and to the persisting hope of people that transcends borders.
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West: A Translation (Copper Canyon Press, 2023) is written by Paisley Rekdal, also a guest at the Tools for the Undercommons, IA Collaboratories public event in November 2025. An unflinching hybrid collection of poems and essays, the book was commissioned to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad.
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Practicing Community, Cultivating Democracy (Deaconess Foundation, 2025) by IA NAB member Sylvia Gale, an outcome of a Fulbright Scholarship to Finland, outlines five practices for cultivating community building and civic action. These practices offer a hopeful and yet also pragmatic approach through which people working in human-serving, human-interacting professions of multiple kinds can act within our existing roles to cultivate inclusive and participatory communities–which is a precondition to a flourishing democracy.
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