Humanities Matter! Conference

Click here for in-depth session descriptions on our Wyoming Humanities Network blog!

***Scroll Down for Online Registration, Online Payment, and Full Conference Schedule!***

The Wyoming Humanities Council is pleased to announce the Humanities Matter! conference, which will take place October 23-24 at Central Wyoming College in Riverton.

The Wyoming Humanities Council's Humanities Matter! conference will bring together representatives of community organizations, museum and library personnel, interested community members, and humanities faculty from across Wyoming to explore how to work together to create humanities courses and public programming that will address issues relevant to their lives, communities, and world.

Travel Stipends

Thanks to the generosity of the University of Wyoming Foundation and the Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund, a limited number of travel supplements are available for college and university faculty, representatives of community nonprofit organizations, and museum and library professionals. Conference attendees who live less than 50 miles from Riverton are eligible for a $100 travel supplement, while those who are traveling from elsewhere in the state can apply for a $250 travel supplement. In return, recipients will attend both days of the conference and fill out a brief conference evaluation. Supplements are available on a first come, first served basis.

Keynote

First Lady Nancy Freudenthal will open the conference, after which the conference keynote address will be given by David Berry, winner of the National Humanities Medal and Director of the Community College Humanities Association. He also sits on the board of Imagining America, a consortium of colleges and universities that promotes "scholarly and creative work jointly planned and carried out by university and community partners."

Humanities Engaged: The Art of Regional Change

The Art of Regional Change (ARC) program at the University of California, Davis, creates "community cultural development projects that involve faculty, students, and community members in collaborative, place-based storytelling." In this panel, four ARC representatives jesikah maria ross, ARC Director; Michael Ziser, Associate Professor of English; Patsy Eubanks Owens, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture; and Holly George, Cooperative Extension Director provide examples of public humanities projects that benefit both faculty and communities. From the perspectives of faculty, community cultural developer, and community partner, they address both the challenges and opportunities of public scholarship and college-community engagement. Following the panel, an open space brainstorming session provides participants with the chance to work with ARC panelists to begin planning projects that bring together Wyoming's colleges and communities.

Getting Started in Second Life and Possible Worlds, with Brock Dubbels
Brock Dubbels designs face-to-face, virtual, and hybrid learning environments, exploring new technologies for creating engagement with learners. Brock has worked as a Fulbright Scholar at the Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology, and also at Xerox PARC and Oracle. He is currently a research associate at the Center for Cognitive Science at the University of Minnesota, where he works with educators in reading; teaches online course work on gaming; and conducts research on learning through game design. He is the founder and principal learning architect at VGALT: Video Games as Learning Tools.

Brock is leading two sessions at Humanities Matter! The first, Possible Worlds: Learning, Beliefs, and Instruction in Real and Virtual Worlds looks at research on comprehension, creating sustained engagement through play, and the difficulty of cultural beliefs about learning and the fear of connecting with games. The session then turns to ways that Second Life and other instructional environments have been used effectively -- including some of Brock's own work-- and how it can be replicated across content and context.

The second session, Getting Started in Second Life, will be a hands-on workshop, during which participants will familiarize themselves with Second Life, with Brock's guidance. The workshop will finish with a Second Life scavenger hunt. Due to computer lab space constraints, enrollment for Getting Started in Second Life is limited. Preregistration is required.  

Conference Sessions

Topics that will be addressed by Wyoming faculty and humanities professionals include how to create courses and public humanities programming for specific audiences, such as nurses or veterans; how to combine humanities courses and programming with the sciences or the arts; how to incorporate American Indian content in courses and programs; and how to implement service learning, which integrates community service with instruction, into colleges and their communities.

Humanities Matter! Grant Initiative

To encourage collaboration between humanities scholars and community organizations following the conference, the council has created a special Humanities Matter! grant initiative to fund new projects in which college faculty work with museums, libraries, and other community organizations to serve their communities.

Sponsorship

Humanities Matter! is sponsored by the Wyoming Humanities Council, with support from the Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund; the Wyoming Community College Commission; the University of Wyoming American Studies Program; and the University of Wyoming Foundation. The conference is also made possible by the We the People initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Click here to view the full conference schedule!

 Click here to view the registration brochure for Humanities Matter!

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER ONLINE FOR HUMANITIES MATTER!

Humanities Matter! Online Payments

Early registration (by Oct. 9)--Full Conference $45.00 Early Registration (by Oct. 9) for 1 day $30.00 Regular Registration--Full Conference $60.00 Regular Registration for 1 day $35.00

Last Updated on 10/19/2009 3:30:01 PM