On Sunday, February 24, I’m hosting a live video interview—Can Conversation Cure? Developing the Practice of Talk Therapy. My guests are Tom Strong, a psychologist and counselor-educator at the University of Calgary, and Murray Dabby, an Atlanta-based social worker, therapist, trainer and relationshipcoach. It will take place 12 noon-1:30 p.m. Eastern U.S....
I've traveled to several cities recently, speaking with students and faculty at different universities and introducing performance and improv to them through workshops. It 's always provocative and eye-opening to challenge the knowing paradigm at a university (for obvious reasons). Inviting professional knowers and knowers-to-be to perform philosophy as a new...
I'm super excited about the upcoming (in September) Performing the World conference and so privileged to be chairing it again! I'm sharing the first of many newsletters because these people deserve to be known! Newsletter #1 July 3, 2018 Old Friends and New The 10th Performing the World 2018 (PTW) will take place in...
At certain points in history, the paradigm that generated so much information comes to function as a hindrance to the use of that information. Fred Newman...
“Hope springs eternal” is an English proverb that originated in an 18thcentury poem by Alexander Pope. It doesn’t, though. We have to create hope through what we do. This is the message I and many others are taking out to people we meet—from talks we give (“Creating Communities of Hope”) to...
With deepening social and political crises worldwide, many who want to make a difference find that they need more. They search for new tools, methods, conceptions and approaches to move forward. Since 2004, the Institute’s flagship program, The International Class, has attracted over 100 passionate and creative scholars, researchers, clinicians and...
I was one of four invited speakers at the Applied Linguistics Winter Conference last week, the theme of which was Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. Preparing my talk took me back to my academic roots as a researcher of early language development. It also took me back to my organizer-activist roots as...
Being/Becoming an Activist Scholar: Lessons From Cultural-Historical Activity Research This past week I participated in a symposium at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) conference held in NYC, along with two distinguished co-presenters, Kris Guitierrez and Anna Stetsenko. A diverse group of younger scholars served as interviewers, with many in the audience...
My last post referenced the Consciencia Congress I was about to fly to Puebla Mexico for and this post gives a flavor of it. Seven speakers all in one (very long) day—addressing the topic of love, mostly from the perspective of the individual and how love is good for you....
“Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.” So said Mark Twain, a wise and witty man with a singular way with words. I’ve long thought Twain is giving us excellent advice and these days it’s especially compelling. Whether in the newspaper,...