More than 400 scholars, students and community members will converge at New Mexico State University Oct. 3-5 for the 25th anniversary of the Imagining America (IA) National Gathering.
Imagining America is a national consortium of colleges and universities that promotes public scholarship and practice in the arts, humanities and design to foster a more just and equitable society.
The theme for this year’s gathering is “Providing Passage: Practicing the Worlds We Want,” which celebrates and conjures passages of all types and the life-sustaining ecological, physical, intellectual and spiritual passages that artists, organizers and scholars provide as a way forward in these turbulent times.
“NMSU President Valerio Ferme is a longtime supporter and advocate of Imagining America, and a deep believer in the transformative work of community engaged arts and humanities research,” said Stephanie Maroney, IA managing rector. “I’m really excited for the network to visit NMSU. It’s a beautiful, peaceful campus with a really engaged student community, committed faculty and people who care deeply about the education of their students and have the kind of rooted connections to the region that the national IA community can experience during the gathering.”
“The topic resonates deeply with me, as president of an institution of higher learning and as a human being,” Ferme said. “In New Mexico, we are particularly close to the paradoxes that our state’s luscious beauty and challenging aridity, as well as fraught but rich cultural encounters along imaginary and real frontiers, engender in us. And today, even as the state has invested heavily to provide passage for younger and older generations into more affordable and novel educational opportunities, our educational and emotional landscape has been disrupted by seismic changes.”
At the opening plenary session at NMSU’s Atkinson Recital Hall on Oct. 3, artists and scholars from the Paso del Norte region will engage the border through the lens of lived experience and ecology, allowing them to reframe questions of belonging beyond nation-states. After that, NMSU’s equestrian team will lead a procession to Corbett Center Student Union, where many of the workshops, panels and activities will take place.
This year’s program features more than 100 speakers from over 50 higher education and cultural institutions across the U.S., with significant participation from IA-member institutions and from the Paso del Norte region. Presentations are offered in a range of formats from five-minute lightning talks and 15-minute projects and presentations to participatory workshops (highly interactive and collaborative opportunities for group co-creation) and creative works (ongoing interactive installations or collective art-making activities).
Registration for the three-day immersive experience is open now and available throughout the gathering.
Various activities will take place in different locations across campus and will culminate after the gathering is over with a separately scheduled limited group tour along the Camino Real, with a stop and discussions at the Doña Ana Community College branch at Sunland Park, New Mexico, and ending with dinner at Ardovino’s Dessert Crossing.
“What an incredible way to showcase who we are as a land-grant institution and to show that New Mexico State University can be a model for land grants nationwide,” said Teresa Maria Linda Scholz, NMSU vice president for equity, inclusion and diversity and co-leader of the local steering committee for the event. “I mean specifically that we're located in the borderlands, we're also a community engaged institution. This three-day gathering will showcase not only the arts, humanities and scholarship of our university but also our community partnerships and relationships.”
“As a native New Mexican, I am excited that people from across the country will be visiting this region and will be able to see for themselves what our borderlands area is, and to be inspired by this area,” said Cynthia Bejarano, NMSU Regents professor and co-leader of the steering committee for the event. “The Imagining America Gathering by design, will provide collaborative and creative experiences that I find to be invigorating and innovative, and an important opportunity for a community-engaged institution like NMSU to be part of.”
The gathering brings together a broad range of topics in different formats, including activities from storytelling to community engagement and many other types of work. Check out the major tracks and themes that will be explored.
A performance/media screening track will feature the work of visionary poet, theater artist and IA ancestor Sekou Sundiata: “The America Project: the 51st (dream) state” (performance video) and “finding the 51st (dream) state: Sekou Sundiata’s America Project” (documentary).
Participants also will have the opportunity to join a series of community-hosted site visits on the afternoon of Saturday, Oct. 4. These include trips to the Las Cruces Museum System, Tortugas Pueblo, the Fabián García Research Center and the Chile Pepper Institute’s Teaching Garden, Mesilla, New Mexico, and the historic Fountain Theatre, a multi-sited experience of the arts at NMSU and a walking tour of historic Las Cruces.
“Nationally, I think it's important to be reminded of the rich and beautiful lives that people in Southwestern New Mexico live through their relations with folks in this broader region, which includes another state,” Maroney said. “It includes another country, includes multiple languages. It includes multiple religious practices and is engaged with the Indigenous people of this land, many of whom are a part of the IA National Gathering.”
“It's a wonderful opportunity to feature the beauty, the artwork and sense of community that’s inspired by the U.S.-Mexico border region, El Paso and the Northern Mexico region for Imagining America participants,” said Bejarano. “I feel that this gathering will provide an invigorating and engaging intellectual and creative space that is uniquely different from anything else that I have seen done at this scale at NMSU.”
“We hope that participants in the gathering take away a sense of community, a sense of building relationships and a sense that New Mexico is probably not what they expected,” Scholz said. “We hope that being in Las Cruces specifically, and in this region overall, opens their eyes to things that often go unseen. People often have assumptions about the border, but when they see what people have done in this area and bear witness to the resiliency of communities in this region, I am hoping that that’s what they’ll take away from it. I believe that’s the whole concept of Imagining America and the theme of ‘practicing the worlds we want’ is to welcome guests to our community so they can truly experience it.”
The steering committee that worked together developing this year’s gathering included 18 members from various university faculty and staff along with local community groups.
Imagining America thanks the generous sponsors who have supported the diverse offerings at the IA National Gathering, including the American Council of Learned Societies, GivePulse, University of Miami Office of Civic Engagement, DACC, the City of Las Cruces, the City of Davis Arts & Cultural Affairs program, NMSU’s president and provost offices as well as the deans of each of the university’s five colleges and many individual donors supporting community registrations.
If you have any questions, would like to schedule interviews with IA staff or guest speakers, or have other ideas for press coverage, please contact IA Communications Director Anuj Vaidya at anuva@ucdavis.edu.
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CUTLINE: The visual artist for the 2025 Imagining America National Gathering is Citlali Delgado, a Chicana visual artist from El Paso who has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from New Mexico State University. Delgado created a number of posters for the IA National Gathering. (art by Citlali Delgado)
CUTLINE: New Mexico State University President Valerio Ferme President is a longtime supporter and advocate of the Imagining America National Gathering, which NMSU is hosting Oct. 3-5. (NMSU photo by Josh Bachman)
CUTLINE: Stephanie Maroney is the managing director for Imagining America. New Mexico State University is hosting the Imagining America National Gathering Oct. 3-5. (Photo courtesy Imagining America)
CUTLINE: Teresa Maria Linda Scholz, NMSU vice president for equity, inclusion and diversity, is a co-leader of the local steering committee for the Imagining America National Gathering at New Mexico State University Oct. 3-5. (NMSU photo by Josh Bachman)
CUTLINE: Cynthia Bejarano, NMSU Regents professor, is a co-leader of the steering committee for the Imagining America National Gathering at New Mexico State University Oct. 3-5. (NMSU photo by Josh Bachman)
