“Boundless: Arts and Intellects” is the first-ever Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) wide conference focused on the arts, humanities and social sciences. Millersville University is hosting this two-day event at the downtown campus Ware Center on Friday and Saturday, October 11-12. Attendance to conference panels, art exhibits, performances and the conference keynote address are free and open to all faculty, students and the general public. If anyone wishes to register for the conference (the fee includes lunch on Friday and Saturday), the registration is $25/student and $50 faculty/general public with a $10 discount with Millersville ID.
The Boundless conference provides an opportunity to recognize and share the myriad ways that the singular sensibilities and abilities obtained via an education in the arts, humanities and social sciences are crucially important to the future of our life-worlds. More than a shadow partner to STEM, students and faculty in the humanities, arts and social sciences actively shape the political, social, and economic landscape of our times, stretching at the boundaries of what seems possible / impossible, raising the most pertinent ethical concerns, providing the spark for technical innovations that transform the relations between humans, their tools and their environment. As Apple founder Steve Jobs stated in 2011, “[T]echnology alone is not enough – it’s technology married with the liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields the results that make our hearts sing.”
The final conference line-up has 17 panels of three-four papers each and over a dozen artworks and performative pieces: from painting and photography to dance and poetry to audio-visual installations and sculpture. Eight of the universities in the PASSHE system will be represented at Boundless. It will be a stirring showcase of work by students and faculty from Bloomsburg, California, East Stroudsburg, Kutztown, Millersville, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock and West Chester.
The conference keynote on Friday afternoon (1:30 pm) will be delivered by Dr. E. Michele Ramsey from Penn State – Berks. Her talk will be based upon her forthcoming book (co-written with Dr. Laurie Grobman, also of Penn State – Berks): Major Decisions: College, Career and the Case for the Humanities (University of Pennsylvania Press). Together, Dr. Grobman and Dr. Ramsey will also host a hands-on workshop on Saturday morning (9:30 am) titled, “Change the Narrative, Change the Numbers: Humanities Now and in the Future.”
The pre-planning for Boundless: Arts and Intellects began in late 2018 and continued with meetings among a large group of AHSS faculty in the Winter and Spring 2019. Dean Ieva Zake has been unwavering in her enthusiastic support of this event. The core committee is Drs. Gregory J. Seigworth, Leslie Gates and Kim McCollum-Clark. Many faculty and students are pitching in to help with the conference, promoting it in their classes, hanging flyers around campus, chairing sessions and more.
More information, including the conference program, can be found at: https://www.millersville.edu/hss/boundless-conference