Design elements for this banner were created by TANA, visual artists for the 2026 IA National Gathering.

Dear IA Community, 

It is our pleasure to announce that the new host of Imagining America (starting July 1, 2027) is The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State)! After a two-year search process led by the IA National Advisory Board (NAB), where we engaged multiple inspiring campus communities, Penn State emerged as a well prepared and visionary candidate to lead and strengthen the national consortium. We are deeply grateful for partners from all of the potential host campuses who spent time with the NAB and shared with us the good work taking place in their communities. Penn State’s demonstrated commitment to lifting and catalyzing public service and engaged scholarship, art, and design towards a vibrant and healthy democratic society is just what IA needs in these times. The IA staff and board are eager to engage in a thoughtful transition process with Penn State colleagues over the coming year, as we continue to develop and support the diverse programs and benefits the IA community values. Please look out for more on the host campus transition from Penn State, coming soon! 

At the National Gathering, the IA community will join together in Davis, California, October 23-25, to mark this transition and welcome the new IA host campus. This momentous occasion presents us with a unique opportunity to reflect on the past decade, engage in critical reflection about our present, and imagine a thriving future for civically engaged campus communities and regions. We invite you to join us in thanking UC Davis and dreaming up the future of Imagining America with our Penn State colleagues. More broadly, this year’s National Gathering, Tides of Transition: Restoring Collective Spirit in Troubled Times, invites us to reflect on the importance of transitions in the world – from political crises to global climate change, and personal identity to organizational transformation. Members of the diverse IA network will come together to share stories, research, creative works, and community practices exploring the complex process of transitioning away from a politics of division and separation and toward restoring our collective wellbeing, energy, and spirit.

We hope to see you there! Submit your proposal by June 30th, and don’t forget to register!

In community,

Erica Kohl-Arenas

IA Faculty Director

Paul Schadewald

IA Board Chair

Imagining America is pleased to launch the 2025-2026 PAGE Blog Salon which features the work of IA’s current Publicly Active Graduate Education (PAGE) fellows, and demonstrates what it means to put learning into practice for building individual and collective agency/power.

Mandy Muise ruminates on what 'cultivation' means in the context of farming, food justice, and community building, while Leah Friedman engages community in the context of bodily and data autonomy. Shromona Mandal offers a brief history of zine-making in the process of creating her own zine about Hindu fundamentalism in the US, while Ada Marys Lorenzana offers a rich multi-media history of the Spanish-language publication Tribuno del Pueblo, which began publishing in 1973.

Chimee Adịọha's blog post introduces us to the work of Diaspora Africa which addresses migrant justice issues through storytelling, and Meng-Hsuan Ho introduces us to the labor it takes to move stories across borders in the context of K-pop fan-girl culture. Ashley Martin-Casler's post encourages us to recognize music as a channel for emotional modulation and wellbeing, while Asia N. Ashley's contribution explores how gathering around a text becomes an act of resistance and care.

Member Spotlight on University of Redlands

Since 1907, the University of Redlands has prepared students for lives of meaning, impact, and joy through immersive, personalized, and career-focused education. In this month’s member spotlight, we learn more about Redlands’ work around civic engagement and educational justice.

IA News and Events

Art by Angelica Sauceda, TANA archive.

Two Weeks Left to Submit to the 2026 IA National Gathering Call for Participation!



Tides of Transition: Restoring Collective Spirit in Troubled Times reflects on the importance of transitions – from political crises to global climate change, and personal identity to organizational transformation – this call for participation invites proposals that share stories, research, creative works, and community practices exploring the complex process of transitioning away from systems of fear and domination and towards restoring collective spirit.

Watch the CFP Virtual Information Session Recording or access the CFP slide deck to learn about the submission process, formats (lightning talks, projects and practices, workshops, and creative works), and more.

Imagining America’s 2026-2027 fellowship programs for graduate and undergraduate students is now open!

PAGE Fellowship Application for Graduate Students

The application period for the 2026-2027 PAGE Fellows cohort is now open, and applications are due Tuesday June 30, 2026.

Publicly Active Graduate Education (PAGE) is Imagining America’s (IA) network for publicly engaged graduate students in humanities, arts, and design. PAGE enhances the praxis and pedagogy of public scholarship; fosters a national, interdisciplinary community of peers and veteran scholars; and creates opportunities for collaborative knowledge production. The PAGE consortium, made up of alumni and allies of the program, promotes opportunities for mentorship and peer support from IA’s network.

IA/JGS Fellowship Application for Undergraduate Students

The application period for the 2026-2027 IA/JGS Fellows cohort is now open and applications are due Wednesday July 15, 2026.

The goals of the IA/JGS Fellows Program are to elevate photography and digital media as pathways for undergraduate students to pursue their careers and to make a difference in their communities. The program specifically aims to support students for whom economic and family circumstances render such career pathways particularly challenging.

Resources

News From the Field

• The School of Radical Imagination is offering a new format for its Summer 2026 session, where 20+ faculty from around the world will be exploring themes like decolonial praxis, regenerative leadership, digital sovereignty, foreign policy, storytelling, childhood, systems change, and what it means to live with imagination in this moment. Schedules are now live! Most courses include a downloadable syllabus so you can explore the themes, structure, and readings before enrolling.

• In an effort to support greater engagement efforts at public and land-grant universities, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) has released a report outlining a public engagement agenda. The report, Public Purpose, Renewed: Future-Leading Engagement in Higher Education, is a follow-up on engagement efforts since a landmark 1999 Kellogg Commission report called on public and land-grant universities to reimagine their role in society. It traces the trajectory of engagement work at public and land-grant universities over the past two and a half decades from isolated efforts led by individuals toward focused, institution-wide commitments that are key to the mission of these institutions.

• Ten years ago, the College Arts Association (CAA) published the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts, providing clear, practical guidance on invoking fair use in scholarship, teaching, art-making, museum practice, and archival access. This groundbreaking resource emerged from extensive research funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and it has been widely endorsed by organizations across the visual arts and cultural heritage fields. However, given that the landscape has shifted dramatically in just a decade, CAA invites individuals to complete the following survey which will inform a revision process, and an update to the original document.

• CALL FOR RESIDENCIES: Hold Space Retreat for Artists of Color offers artists and cultural workers of color dedicated time for communal living, creative practice, and rest on Ox-Bow’s historic campus in Saugatuck, Michigan. Designed to nurture reflection, collaboration, and renewal, the retreat provides individuals or groups of up to twelve participants space to create, organize, and connect within a supportive environment. Retreats may be scheduled for one to seven nights between September 14–20, 2026. Deadline: July 5, 2026.

• CALL FOR PROPOSALS: The John Templeton Foundation is launching its first Venture: a meta-portfolio of philanthropic investments that harnesses the resources and rich multi-disciplinarity of the Foundation to address one of the most urgent, important, and complex topics of our time. How should we understand the nature, purpose, and future of intelligence itself? Project proposals (film, video, audio, print, events) that engage broad public audiences are encouraged. Deadline: July 15, 2026.

• CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: The Department of Art and Art History, at IA member institution Providence College, seeks a full-time, one-year visiting assistant professor in Modern/Contemporary Art History (1800-present) to begin August 1, 2026. The successful candidate will participate in the team-taught western survey course and teach courses in Modern and Contemporary art history during the academic year 2026-2027. Deadline: Rolling, until filled.

What We Are Anticipating Reading

(Upcoming books that will be available Fall 2026 and later)

• End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World (September 2026). In this blistering reckoning with our age, Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor take us deep into this man-made Armageddon complex – and show us how to resist it. Around the globe, they investigate how those who are making our world unlivable through climate chaos and job-consuming AI are preparing to protect themselves from the fallout, whether it’s by repairing to luxurious private islands for the super-rich, rocketing off to Mars or bunkering nations against a dehumanized ‘other’.

• Liberation Is Other People (November 2026), by Alexis Shotwell, offers a bold and timely exploration of how we confront the immense, interconnected challenges of our time. It begins with the truth that many of the crises we face—climate collapse, war, systemic inequality—are human-made and therefore humanly transformable. Yet such “wicked problems” cannot be solved by individuals alone. Every attempt to repair exposes how deeply our lives are entangled across histories of power, privilege, and vulnerability.

• Counterinsurgency Machine (February 2027). In this fiery polemic, political theorist Dylan Rodríguez addresses the phenomenon he calls “the counterinsurgency machine,” a formal and informal coalition of institutions that temper revolutionary movements. Tracing the legacy of counterinsurgency from colonial control through the development of the US military’s Counterinsurgency Field Manual and the FBI’s COINTELPRO, this book shows how counter-revolutionary efforts are increasingly channeled through progressive, liberal, and left-oriented “social justice” actors, both unwittingly and opportunistically.