Dr. Amanda Singer, Associate Professor in PSU's School of Music & Theater, co-coordinator of the Social Justice and the Arts program
Amanda Singer, PSU School of Music & Theater faculty member and co-coordinator of the Social Justice and the Arts program, was appointed by the Center for Women's Leadership to a leadership team charged with developing a proposal for PSU to become the next host campus of Imagining America.
A national consortium of higher education, communities, artists, designers, humanists, organizers and activists, Imagining America’s goal is "to imagine, study, and enact a more just and liberatory ‘America’ and world." The consortium supports national conversations and regional projects focused on how higher education can engage the arts to build the world we want. Following its 10-year residency at UC Davis, Imagining America has invited PSU to develop a full proposal to be its next home beginning in summer 2025.
The Leadership Team includes the following PSU faculty and staff:
Dr. Amanda Singer, Associate Professor, Music & Theater, College of the Arts
Dr. Roberta Hunte, Associate Professor, School of Social Work
Harold McNaron, Teaching, Learning & Engagement Associate, Office of Academic Innovation
Vicki Reitenauer, CWL Faculty Co-Director, Professor, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Rhaiannon Cates, Special Collections Technician, Millar Library
"Membership in Imagining America will expand the Social Justice and the Arts program's reach into a broad community of scholar-practitioners working toward the common goal of humanitarian change-making,” Singer explained. “If we are successful in winning the bid to host Imagining America at PSU, we will be adding dynamic collaborators into our own creative learning community, and will be gaining front-row seats in the national conversation exploring how to lend imagination to positive change-making."
The work that Singer and her co-coordinator, Professor Darrell Grant, are doing in PSU's Social Justice & the Arts program, is illustrated in a short film that they created with their student, Allen Myers, a professional filmmaker. The film weaves together student and community reflections via interviews, student artwork and a collective poetic response to explore the layered meaning of social justice. It moves from inquiry to expression and asks not just for definitions, but for embodiment—for the viewer to engage, reflect, and respond.