James Madison Center for Civic Engagement: Democracy Matters

What is inclusion and how can inclusive music contribute to a culture of democratic engagement through authentic experiences of participatory musicking? JMU's Center for Inclusive Music Engagement is facilitating innovative opportunities for all persons-particularly those are often marginalized in institutional music education contexts-to create, perform, respond, and connect with, in, through, an...

From Richmond to the West Bank, from Kentucky to Tanzania, photography has the potential to communicate lived experiences and complex social issues to those in power. In this episode, we talk with internationally acclaimed photographer Wendy Ewald about her work in Virginia and beyond using photography as a collaborative process to strengthen democracy. Ewald has spent more than 40 years collabora...

Student attention is a scarce commodity. What are the best opportunities for capturing student attention to engage them in civic learning and democratic engagement? In this episode we talk with Jennifer Domagal-Goldman, Executive Director of the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, and Michael Peshkin, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University. As a first step to deeper engageme...

John Dewey said that "Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife." Although people who go to college are slightly more likely to vote, their participation in other forms of political engagement are actually slightly depressed. There is more we can do in both academic AND student affairs to really make a difference in preparing students to be actively engaged in de...

Academic communities can be major drivers of civic engagement and critical thought around major issues. JMU Senior Ethan Gardner talks with Anna Williams and Yeimy Gamez Castillo, two students from the Rutgers-Newark University Honors Living Learning Community who attended the 2019 Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Conference. Their conversation covers a variety of important topics on how a...

Communities around the world are demanding full participation in every step of the research process, from identifying the issues to be looked at, to prioritizing them, to developing the research design, to creating the instruments used to collect the data, to being involved in the analysis of the data and in the development of policy prescriptions. As a result, increasingly university-based resear...

Two questions animate our work: What if? How so? The work of imagining is something we should take very seriously in civic engagement. It's difficult to engage our senses in this difficult and academic work and the shrinking imagination stifles our work. Professor Tim Eatman, Dean of the Honors Living-Learning Community and Associate Professor of Urban Education in the College of Arts and Sciences...

From teaching information literacy, to providing community gathering spaces, to fostering access to information, to connecting people with each other, and more, James Madison University Librarians Kristen Shuyler and Liz Chenevey discuss their research about how libraries of all types in Virginia and across the country support democracy and the civic life of their communities. See the show notes w...

Dr. Barbara Schaal, Dean of Arts and Sciences and Mary-Dell Chilton Distinguished Professor Professor of Biology at the Washington University in St. Louis discusses the importance of a liberal arts education, and of including science and scientific expertise in policy and decision-making processes to strengthen democracy.

Artists use so many different mediums to comment on their surroundings, some use it as an opportunity to make a statement on current events and government action. Photographer and activist, Pato Hebert, sits down with us to discuss art's undeniable place in the conversation about democracy.