All Campus Events

Lou Jones, The Ward Family, 2017, Nikon D800 Photographs preserve discrete moments in time, but they also encapsulate complexities of art and technology as well as social practice and lived experience. When descendants of the original sitters gathered this past fall for the opening of Worcester Art Museum’s Rediscovering an American Community of Color: The […]

Abraham Schroeder Socially engaged art exists at the intersection between powerful symbolic statements and quantifiable political change. Rooted in the long history of artistic traditions and more recent upheavals and revolutions, socially engaged art has the power to interrogate privilege and inequity as well as identity-based pretexts for social and political discrimination. William Chambers, instructor […]

RosaIreneBetancourt11/Alamy Stock photo In the 1960s and 70s, most urban centers in the US boasted a thriving array of radical clinics, often linked to political movements such as the Black Panther Party and the Women’s Health Movement. A handful of these clinics remain and continue to evolve, still offering exceptional care today. In the best […]

Samuel Jennings, Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences or The Genius of America  Encouraging the Emancipation of Blacks, 1792, courtesy of the Library Company of Philadelphia Last July’s KKK march in Charlottesville, Virginia protesting the removal of the Robert E. Lee monument that dominated a city park was in some ways a rag-tag reenactment of […]

istock.com/drakuliren A swarm of angry villagers emerges from the mist, torches lit and pitchforks drawn. Marching through the darkness, they hunt a monster, spurred on by fear and screaming for retribution. Are they coming to save the day, or do they blindly seek to crush that which is more misunderstood than menacing? What happens when […]

Death leads a man to his own corpse, Office of the Dead, from a Book of Hours, France, ca. 1450 The popularity of shows like “The Walking Dead” and “Zombie Nation” reveal an increasing national fascination with the undead. But interest in zombies, revenants, and animated corpses is nothing new, having long captured the imagination […]

Steven King/Clark University Students and teachers, tutors and mentors, organizers and activists—all those involved in prison education programs can speak to the many overlapping benefits for individuals, families, and communities. In this follow-up panel to “Why Bother with Prison Education?”, participants will discuss the goals of various programs, offer reflections on their own experiences, and […]

  Arguments for the value of prison education generally focus on larger social benefits, such as reduced recidivism. Arguments might also be made, however, for the less quantifiable but no less transformative outcomes for individuals themselves. Professor and poet Jill McDonough (University of Massachusetts Boston) has seen this transformation firsthand, teaching literature and creative writing […]

Lightspring/Shutterstock.com The pursuit of common goals derives from a consideration of many individual perspectives—what we know from experience, what we imagine through compassion, and what we learn by listening to others. But with so many stakeholders involved, how do we support, utilize, and recognize contributions to the public good? Do we think first of organizations—whether […]

Courtesy of William Chambers Part installation, part performance, wholly participatory. These ongoing socially-engaged works by artist and instructor William Chambers use the power of art objects to foster conversation on important issues and to allow for the unexpected. “Service Station” begins with a vintage cloth hand-towel dispenser. Participants are asked to describe “What’s missing?” in […]