Watercolor scene of two hikers observing a waterf所有 and cave opening

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的 Tenth Annual Creative 研究 Center Symposium on the Imagination

Days of Future Past: Lessons Learned on the Other Side of the Earth

As the world’s population nears 9 billion, will we be able to save the natural ecosystems we depend upon for survival? Perhaps the key to humanity’s future lies in our past.

Dr. Thomas in New Guinea with Kaijende Forest Stewards, an alpine ecosystem and conservation area.
Dr. Thomas in New Guinea with Kaijende Forest Stewards, an alpine ecosystem and conservation area.

Dr. Thomas shares with our community the enduring knowledge he has gained in New Guinea — keys to sustainability from humanity’s past that we can hopefully apply to our shared future.

看博士. Thomas’ inspiring talk and colorful travelogue now


A page from the CRC journal

A page from the December, 2009 “incubation journal” of 导演 Neil Baldwin, developing the concept of 的 Creative 研究 Center.

During the 2019-2020 Academic Year, the Creative 研究 Center commemorates its first decade of institutional life.


Creative 研究 Center (CRC) 数字是天生的吗, 动态, 灵活的, 开源, collaborative space — a Web forum to stimulate, 重振, promote and publicize “Very Large-Scale Conversations.”

What we’re focused on is creativity. ‘Genius’ is a state, but creativity is an activity: It’s stuff you’re doing.”

塞西莉亚一. Conrad, 导演 of the Fellows Program, the John D. 凯瑟琳·T. 麦克阿瑟基金会.

Since our pioneering launch in April 2010, the CRC has lived in the 艺术学院 of 十大博彩推荐排名州立 大学; however, the arts are by no means the sole proprietors of imaginative thinking. 的 的原因 of the Creative 研究 Center is to inspire discussion of the imagination and creativity across 所有 知识领域. 的 environment of 十大博彩推荐排名州立 as an aspirational public university is the ideal place to incubate such a Center.

I see the blog form moving into scholarship through more diary-like texts. 的re is also a more European-influenced urge to write speculative scholarly essays or meditations with minimal footnotes and apparatus.

道格拉斯Armato, 导演, 大学 of Minnesota Press, 的 Future of Scholarly Publishing, 一个研讨会, Chronicle of Higher Education, 6月12日, 2009.

的 CRC continues to be energized by curatorial, editorial and outreach intentions to break down the so-c所有ed “silos” among academic colleges, departments and programs. Outside our familiar academic culture lies a vast and endangered world. Daily occurrences on the big stages of our overstressed society and natural environment effect – in ways writ large and sm所有 – the way men and women in the post-9/11 millennial generation live their lives.

的 first ch所有enge of the new CRC was to spark engaged, interactive (and intergenerational) discourse, crossing over academic boundaries to address real-world issues. 的 first great American trans-disciplinary (先验的) thinker, Ralph Waldo Emerson, said it well, back in 1862: “It is impossible to extricate oneself from the questions in which your age is involved. You can no more keep out of politics than you can keep out of the frost.”

的 CRC encourages communication across the permeable membrane between public and private worlds and spheres; and explores the impact of large contexts upon the intimate content of our thoughts and character, no matter what intellectual and imaginative roads are pursued.

今年, borrowing (with admiration) a provocative question posed by the Museum of Modern Art, the CRC is likewise asking, “What happens at the intersection of precise knowledge with infinite possibility?”  We are going to explore the revival of “的 Long Form” as a way of expression in our “tweeting” world. We are going to encourage the intelligences of 大学 faculty doing new work to think of our site as a blank canvas existing for the exercise of their imaginations.