This year the CALS spring symposium focuses on the urgent way in which artists and scholars across disciplines create and/or advocate for art that combines artistic expression with advocacy for art that combines artistic expression with advocacy to promote awareness and social and political change at a moment when colleges and universities, and the humanities writ large, are facing overwhelming challenges that undermine, rather than enable, the work of activist arts and scholarship. Five panelists including four Penn State colleagues and an external invited panelist will remark upon the manifold ways in which they, and the arts and/or scholarship they create, intersect with the symposium topic. Each panelist will have ten minutes to deliver an opening remark, to be followed by thirty minutes of Q & A with the audience.

Panelists:

* Mimi Khúc: Writer, Artist, Activist, and Teacher of Things Unwell

* Julia Spicher Kasdof: Liberal Arts Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing, Penn State

* Matt Tierney: Associate Professor of English and Director of the Digital Culture and Media Initiative, Penn State

* Elizabeth Gray: Associate Teaching Professor of Comparative Literature and Coordinator of the Public Humanities Fellowship Program at The Humanities Institute, Penn State

* Lonnie Graham: Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Visual Art, Penn State