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25 July 2014
Dear Friends,
Welcome to the Cultural Agents Initiative’s weekly newsletter, updating you on our recent activities and the work of other cultural agents who are active throughout the world. Please see our websites for more information and news: http://www.culturalagents.org and http://www.pre-texts.org/.To all of our supporters, “texters” (tejedores, tecelões), and collaborators throughout the world, thank you!
The Cultural Agents Initiative is now an official member of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes!
For more information on the CHCI, visit:
http://chcinetwork.org/
Jane Tylus, the Faculty Director of the Humanities Initiative at New York University, visited the Cultural Agents Initiative’s team at Harvard University this week to share ideas and explore the possibility of future collaborations.
To learn about the exciting work of the Humanities Initiative, visit:
http://humanitiesinitiative.org/
SHARP interns Josh Stallings and Jesse Shulman continue to conduct interviews with the staff of leading public humanities programs at universities throughout the United States. These meetings have led to critical discussions about the current state of the public humanities and have generated ideas for future ventures. Notably, Josh is working on the development of a Harvard chapter of NYU’s Humanities Ambassadors Club with the support of Chris Alexander, the Media and Communications Coordinator for the Humanities Initiative at New York University. Chris spoke with the Cultural Agents team this week to discuss how Harvard and NYU undergraduates might work together.
Joel Ostdiek, a rising junior at the University of Notre Dame, is continuing to share his research with us from Paris. Based at UNESCO, he is investigating programs that fund culture for the purpose of development and the Culture for Development Indicators Suite (a tool that is meant to measure the impact of culture for development).
China
In Shenzhen, local teachers facilitated Pre-Texts activities, including acting exercises and musical interludes to explore Maya Angelou’s ‘Caged Bird.’ These teacher-training workshops are being facilitated by Trecia Reavis at the local Fun-n-Friends Centre.
Chile
With the support of MarÃa Paz DomÃnquez and Integra_Lab, Pre-Texts will be introduced to visitors as part of a series of workshops on teacher training at the 7 Salón Internacional de la Educación in Santiago. For more on this event, which will be held at the Centro Cultural Estación Mapocho on August 21 and 22, 2014, see: http://www.salondelaeducacion.cl/
United States
On Friday, August 29, 2014, an optional Pre-Texts training workshop for Romance Languages and Literature students with graduate students from Comparative Literature will be held from 2:30-5pm as part of the Bok Center’s Great Teachers Series. The Great Teachers Series profiles nominated faculty members at Harvard, offering a portrait of his or her work through a selection of interrelated videos. For more information, see:
http://greatteachers.harvard.edu/about-project
Education in the United States
Elizabeth Green’s article “Why Do Americans Stink at Math” asserts the need to rethink the mere ‘adoption’ of new standards like the Common Core, and to offer teachers more support and training to become, as we would say in Pre-Texts, facilitators. To read this article, visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazine/why-do-americans-stink-at-math.html?_r=1
Other Active Cultural Agents
United States
While Cloud Place is closing this summer, Le Laboratoire Cambridge is a new space that will host public programs, art-science exhibitions, lecture series, and an Art Science Prize program. Opening in October 2014, Le Laboratoire Cambridge will become a leading international center for learning through experimentation that is based on an educational model developed by the center’s founder, David Edwards, at Harvard University.
For more on Le Laboratoire Cambridge and its mission to transform the way we learn, visit:
http://thelaboratory.harvard.edu/concept/the-lab/ |
