Interdisciplinary panel discusses “The Liberal Arts and the Digital World”

An academic panel discussion of the roles of screens in our lives and our learning served as the inaugural event in the SUNY New Paltz College of Liberal Arts & Sciences’ year-long series, “Without Limits: Interdisciplinary Conversations in the Liberal Arts.”

The slate of “Without Limits” programming has been planned to highlight the College’s proud heritage of faculty expertise and vital education in the humanities and social sciences, while inviting campus and community partners to investigate the meaning and role of liberal education in the twenty-first century.

“The liberal arts have been the foundation of higher education for centuries, and they have been at the heart of higher education in the United States since its inception,” said Laura Barrett, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. “’Without Limits’ is designed to highlight connections among disciplines, to explore themes through the multiple lenses of the humanities and social sciences and to enhance connections between our work and the world, in order to make more visible the contributions of the liberal arts to SUNY New Paltz and to our community.”

Each of the four panelists (faculty members Wendy Bower, instructor of Communication Disorders, Thomas Olsen, associate professor of English, and Lauren Meeker, associate professor of Anthropology, as well as student Megan Doty ’16 [graphic design, French]) at the Oct. 28 launch event considered the “Screens and Scenes” theme from the perspective of his or her own disciplinary background and research. What ensued was a thoughtful dialogue about the role of technology in our professions, our education and our personal lives.

“In determining what we could talk about that would both be topical and touch upon the strengths of the liberal arts, we came up with ‘Screens and Scenes’: that is, technologies, representations, content, all of which seem to be so central to our lives,” said Cyrus Mulready, associate professor of English and series co-chair. “We as a society have divided feelings about our technologies and their place within our culture. On the one hand, we feel triumphant and elated at the launch of the new iPhone that comes every year; our devices are part of our lives and help us create and think about the world in new and exciting ways. On the other hand, we find they generate alienation, anxiety and worry about what the future holds. We’re happy to present this panel of scholars to carry on this conversation about these topics.”

The “Without Limits” series will continue in spring ’16 beginning April 25, when Jessica Pabon, assistant professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Cesar Barros, assistant professor of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, will join internationally renowned street artist Pau in a discussion of the digital distribution of street art, supplemented by Pau’s contribution of a mural painting created on campus over the course of many days.

On April 28 the series welcomes to New Paltz Brittney Cooper, an assistant professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University. Cooper’s will address her research into hip-hop culture and visual representations of race.

For more about the “Without Limits” series, visit the program website at http://www.newpaltz.edu/collegelas/without-limits/.