Welcome

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Creative Commitments, an occasional digital publication from Lehigh University’s Center for Global Citizenship Education through the Arts and Technology.

At the time of this writing, we find ourselves beginning to return to the world after a year of enclosure. For some, this is a time to fling open the doors with joy. For others, equally happy to still be here, it is also a time to think about what lessons from this past year we might want to retain and ponder. Without a doubt, we are heading into new terrain as a world.

At Lehigh’s Center for Global Citizenship Education through the Arts and Technology, we too are inaugurating new conferences, new connections and now, our first occasional publication. The notion of inauguration resonates as particularly invigorating and inviting in the US where we witnessed the most significant presidential inauguration in recent political history: a transition preceded by unheard-of violence and followed by a shift to a more civil discourse of hope and unity.

As we prepare to unevenly re-greet the larger world as vaccines become available, COVID cases decrease and borders release, our words, visual symbols, art and music will help us to define (and perhaps deliver) whatever new phase humanity is entering.

For those committed to the inclusivity and action that global citizenship orientations imply, even though there is no true fresh start detached from the devastating processes of unbridled development, racism and violence, we still feel the swirling energies of possibility.

To inaugurate is to begin, to start a series of subsequent actions, installations, events or gatherings.
Its Latin roots relate to omens and flights of birds.

Our first occasional publication thus capitalizes upon this theme of inauguration and portents. We have invited submissions across genres and languages to welcome in larger readerships that include all sorts of thinkers, creatives, artists, activists and professionals working in service of the world. We aim to be more inclusive in each edition that moves forward and will be figuring out how to expand what that means as we go.

In this edition, we begin with Howard Blumenthal’s delightful inquiry into what sort of education might be ushered into being. Following this, poet Benjamin Bagocius asks us, in his gorgeous poem “Phoenix was a Figure Skater,” how we learn to fall and to rise again, a question we are posing as individuals, communities and nations. Michael Woolf takes us on a flight through global education’s rethinking processes and, even if we are not yet traveling to Italy, German poet Tanja Kummerfeld moves us into Italian in her poem “Inaugurare.”

Dancer and recent Lehigh Global Citizenship Program graduate Jamie Ghazaii offers a beautiful video musing around the role dance can play in knocking down tired systems and building back up the human spirit in a year of stress and isolation, echoing the imagery of Bagocius’s Phoenix. She speaks about this in her first video and then in the second, she shares her Latin-Caribbean dance group Tumbaõ’s final performance, filmed in outdoor spots on Lehigh’s campus.

What does it mean to showcase bodies of color and movement traditions from these entangled Afro- and indigenous-descent lines at a primarily white institution (PWI)? Bodies that were still there, even if masked and outside, in this year of blatant racism and inequitable experiences of the pandemic in the U.S.? Diversity advocate Bathabile Mthombeni asks this more bluntly in her essay, The Truth About Inclusion, picking up a question near and dear to my heart: how do we include the other and respect and preserve that otherness in the process? A question to hold onto tightly as we shift towards new and better ways of being together in the world.

William Crow’s essay, "Beginnings: Art and Education" further invites us into the powerful role not only of art but of experience, the need to participate and to take risks with others, which Darla Deardorff extends more broadly in her reflections on our common humanity which she interweaves around quotes from Desmond Tutu.

From Pakistan, poet and global educator Sylvia De Souza offers us her elegant poem “Open Ended,” which also underlines our connections. Mexican poet Benjamín Valivia then takes humans to task in his two poems in Spanish from his book Amigos míos (2020, Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa) entitled “El que Arroja los Dados” and “La bestia humana, animal insípido,” which point to the need to decenter ourselves and relinquish any sense of control.

Malik Sheryhar, also from Lahore, Pakistan, rebalances us with an enchanting audio recording, bringing us to the simplest core question at hand: how do we “hold onto those things that make us human beings” and that allow to create and sustain a “happy home” open to all?

We end with a hopeful reminder that peace and humanity exist even in some of the most violence-torn places. Writing from the state of Michoacán in Central Mexico, Joanne Mulcahy closes this publication out with a recounting about the kindness of strangers and our ability to care, trust and connect, even in contexts where the odds would seem to be against us. To believe profoundly in the goodness of others is, perhaps, our first step forward as the world begins its shifts and re-openings.

Each contributor in their own way and then together invites us to consider: What future will we fly towards, whether through our words, our images, sound or dance? How can we find radical hope as we rise from the embers? What omens should we be paying attention to? What do we need to know, remember or consider as we move forward?

Let’s gather here in our virtual space across time zones and experiences to quietly inaugurate something together in our readings, watchings and listenings.

Lina

Angelina Rodríguez, Ph.D.
Professor of Practice / Director, Global Citizenship Program