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“Arts and Activism” Spring Symposium Showcases Poetry, Photography, and Sabotage
The 2026 CALS Spring Symposium focused on the myriad ways that art and activism are intertwined with academic scholarship. The five panelists, including four Penn State colleagues and one external scholar, explored the ways that they create, study, and advocate for art within their own scholarship and activism. The attendees learned not only about the roles art and activism have in academic work, but also got to experience firsthand via the panelists’ presentations poetry readings, photography and installations, and original scholarship.
Mimi Khúc, writer, artist, activist, and “Teacher of Things Unwell,” kicked off the event with a presentation titled “making magic.” Understanding her own work as “magic,” she explained that to make magic is “creative, interactive, and somatic.” She focused on care work, operating within her framework of a “pedagogy of unwellness.” “If we are all unwell, all pedagogy and learning starts from this place.” Khúc’s creative work includes poetry and a deck of Tarot cards, “the asian american tarot,” and a book of curses published by The Asian American Literary Review. “What is justice in a broken world?” she asks. “A curse.”
Julia Kasdorf, Penn State Director of Creative Writing, turned to th e ecological destruction that she saw happening in central Pennsylvania, drawing from her work for her book Shale Play, with documentary photographer Steven Rubin. The natural gas boom, which was funded by Penn State University professors, resulted in gas well construction on and around the property of rural Pennsylvanians, which impacted the health of their children, animals, and land. By immersing herself in community meetings, Kasdorf responded to and documented the ongoing crisis through her poetry and by “staring, prying, listening, and eavesdropping.” “Poetry,” she believes, “can restore meaning and complexity to the violence of human experience.”
Lonnie Graham, Professor Emeritus in Visual Art at Penn State, began his talk by responding to Kasdorf’s talk, saying that he too was not allowed to go in the Pennsylvania river near his home as a child—if he did, his parents knew because it emitted an undeniable stench. Graham’s talk focused on his own photography and activist efforts throughout his career. He believes that “artists must not limit themselves” and must “focus on the needs of their communities.” He stressed the importance of collaboration and the ways that art can not only tell stories but also materially alter the makeup of communities. In one example, he photographed local youth in Philadelphia, placed their images inside of a community center, and thus encouraged them to enter a space that they previously felt was not safe for them. In his words, art-focused activism “starts with a picture, but doesn’t end with a picture.”
Elizabeth Gray, Assistant Teaching Professor in Comparative Literature and Coordinator of the Public Humanities Fellowship Program at The Humanities Institute at Penn State, asked the audience: “Who is considered disposable?” and “What is a body when it is missing?” She focused on art created by Latin American women and queer folks that makes violence visible—like in the case of the “No somos desechables / We Are Not Disposable” performance art piece in Ecatepec, Mexico, in which women repurposed garbage to make clothing emphasizing the linkage between economic and gender-based violence.
Matt Tierney concluded the panel with a shift to theory and critical history, exploring how sabotage travels from political economy into the art world. He explained that when workers participate in sabotage, they interrupt capitalist functionings—and an artist can act as a shoe in the gears of the machine. “Art is business, rather than transcends business,” he says, “and so art does sabotage.”
After discussing their individual (but overlapping) understandings of the role of art in activism, the panelists took questions from the audience. The first was posed by Jess Rafalko, a PhD student in Penn State’s English department and former CALS Graduate Assistant. Rafalko spoke to the ways that the presentations all “alluded to a divide between scholarly and creative work.”
Although, as she said, “academics often live by the imperative to “publish or perish,” but probably none of us will actually die if we don’t get tenure,” she asked the panelists to speak to those tensions, or rather, the “value of publication relative to the material conditions and challenges artist-activists face.” In response, Gray discussed some of the work she had done with migrant women. Much of this has since been removed from online spaces to preserve the safety of those involved, and although her work is not “published” in that way, doing the work in those communities is important and necessary.
Thomas Bryant, PhD student in Penn State’s English department, followed up with a question on collaboration. Graham and Kasdorf responded with advice from their own experiences keeping art constantly rooted in the community and ensuring that art is both collaborative and useful. Gray referenced her work in the Public Humanities program and the necessary work of “pushing back against anti-collaboration efforts” from within academia.
Across the humanities, art and activism are intricately intertwined, with art having the ability to reflect the sociopolitical conditions of our everyday lives, and scholars having the duty to study and advocate for art’s presence in academic and activist spaces.
The 2026 CALS Spring Symposium focused on the myriad ways that art and activism are intertwined with academic scholarship. The five panelists, including four Penn State colleagues and one external scholar, explored the ways that they create, study, and advocate for art within their own scholarship and activism. The attendees learned not only about the roles art and activism have in academic work, but also got to experience firsthand via the panelists’ presentations poetry readings, photography and installations, and original scholarship.
Mimi Khúc, writer, artist, activist, and “Teacher of Things Unwell,” kicked off the event with a presentation titled “making magic.” Understanding her own work as “magic,” she explained that to make magic is “creative, interactive, and somatic.” She focused on care work, operating within her framework of a “pedagogy of unwellness.” “If we are all unwell, all pedagogy and learning starts from this place.” Khúc’s creative work includes poetry and a deck of Tarot cards, “the asian american tarot,” and a book of curses published by The Asian American Literary Review. “What is justice in a broken world?” she asks. “A curse.”
Julia Kasdorf, Penn State Director of Creative Writing, turned to th e ecological destruction that she saw happening in central Pennsylvania, drawing from her work for her book Shale Play, with documentary photographer Steven Rubin. The natural gas boom, which was funded by Penn State University professors, resulted in gas well construction on and around the property of rural Pennsylvanians, which impacted the health of their children, animals, and land. By immersing herself in community meetings, Kasdorf responded to and documented the ongoing crisis through her poetry and by “staring, prying, listening, and eavesdropping.” “Poetry,” she believes, “can restore meaning and complexity to the violence of human experience.”
Lonnie Graham, Professor Emeritus in Visual Art at Penn State, began his talk by responding to Kasdorf’s talk, saying that he too was not allowed to go in the Pennsylvania river near his home as a child—if he did, his parents knew because it emitted an undeniable stench. Graham’s talk focused on his own photography and activist efforts throughout his career. He believes that “artists must not limit themselves” and must “focus on the needs of their communities.” He stressed the importance of collaboration and the ways that art can not only tell stories but also materially alter the makeup of communities. In one example, he photographed local youth in Philadelphia, placed their images inside of a community center, and thus encouraged them to enter a space that they previously felt was not safe for them. In his words, art-focused activism “starts with a picture, but doesn’t end with a picture.”
Elizabeth Gray, Assistant Teaching Professor in Comparative Literature and Coordinator of the Public Humanities Fellowship Program at The Humanities Institute at Penn State, asked the audience: “Who is considered disposable?” and “What is a body when it is missing?” She focused on art created by Latin American women and queer folks that makes violence visible—like in the case of the “No somos desechables / We Are Not Disposable” performance art piece in Ecatepec, Mexico, in which women repurposed garbage to make clothing emphasizing the linkage between economic and gender-based violence.
Matt Tierney concluded the panel with a shift to theory and critical history, exploring how sabotage travels from political economy into the art world. He explained that when workers participate in sabotage, they interrupt capitalist functionings—and an artist can act as a shoe in the gears of the machine. “Art is business, rather than transcends business,” he says, “and so art does sabotage.”
After discussing their individual (but overlapping) understandings of the role of art in activism, the panelists took questions from the audience. The first was posed by Jess Rafalko, a PhD student in Penn State’s English department and former CALS Graduate Assistant. Rafalko spoke to the ways that the presentations all “alluded to a divide between scholarly and creative work.”
Although, as she said, “academics often live by the imperative to “publish or perish,” but probably none of us will actually die if we don’t get tenure,” she asked the panelists to speak to those tensions, or rather, the “value of publication relative to the material conditions and challenges artist-activists face.” In response, Gray discussed some of the work she had done with migrant women. Much of this has since been removed from online spaces to preserve the safety of those involved, and although her work is not “published” in that way, doing the work in those communities is important and necessary.
Thomas Bryant, PhD student in Penn State’s English department, followed up with a question on collaboration. Graham and Kasdorf responded with advice from their own experiences keeping art constantly rooted in the community and ensuring that art is both collaborative and useful. Gray referenced her work in the Public Humanities program and the necessary work of “pushing back against anti-collaboration efforts” from within academia.
Across the humanities, art and activism are intricately intertwined, with art having the ability to reflect the sociopolitical conditions of our everyday lives, and scholars having the duty to study and advocate for art’s presence in academic and activist spaces.