Transgressing Borders: Reimagining Education and the Role of Learning in Community
April 18–19, 2025
Convened by: Elizabeth Cannon, Director of Community-Engaged Learning & Co-PI of the Mellon Foundation’s Community-Engaged Intensives in the Humanities; Zoë Markwalter, CEIH Research and Program Associate; Asilia Franklin-Phipps, Assistant Professor of Educational Studies and Leadership, Co-Coordinator of the Social Justice Education Program at SUNY New Paltz; Robyn Stout Sheridan, Assistant Professor of Educational Studies and Leadership, Co-Coordinator of the Social Justice Education Program at SUNY New Paltz
This program was a multi-day workshop and festival aimed at reimagining how institutions of higher education and local communities worked together in a generative way. Together, we aimed to reshape how we thought about “town-gown” dynamics. We were inspired to co-create a learning ecosystem that centered authentic knowledge-sharing by situating community experts as thought partners alongside academic leaders.
The Topics
- Housing, Food, and Place-Based Justice
- Transgressive Pedagogy
- Porous Borders: Art as Collaboration
- Care as an Act of Abolition
- The Community Clinic
Conveners
Zoë Markwalter
Zoë (she/they) is the Research and Program Associate in the Office of Community Engaged Learning at Vassar which stands on Mohican, Munsee, and Schaghticoke ancestral lands. A neurodivergent learner deeply connected to the Mahhicannituck (Hudson River), Zoë finds her way through fractals of emergence. Among other identities, she is a restorative circle practitioner, weaver, medical industrial complex survivor, and community member. Zoë is a 3 time college drop-out with 3 degrees in higher education. In humanity she makes meaning through the ways in which place informs identity. In scholarship, Zoë’s research is rooted in the ways that identity informs knowledge. Through place we come to know each other. To find belonging.
Asilia Franklin-Phipps
Asilia is an interdisciplinary scholar working as an assistant professor in Educational Studies and Leadership at State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz. She teaches classes in Art, Educational Studies, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and teaches classes on contemporary art, popular culture, literacy, and geography. Inspired by contemporary art, film, and popular culture, Asilia’s work explores affect, pedagogy, race, gender, sexuality, and visual culture.
Elizabeth Cannon
Elizabeth Cannon (she/her) is an educator, facilitator, researcher, and practitioner within the critical community-engaged learning field. Currently, she serves as the Director of Community-Engaged Learning at Vassar (which resides on the occupied Munsee Lenape land). Elizabeth’s research interests focus on critical feminism within community engagement, community accountability, the role of power dynamics between institutions and communities, and best practices for centering community voice.
Kate Powell
Kate is a sophomore at Vassar and a Cognitive Science major with correlates in French and Creative Writing. She is originally from Buffalo, NY. Kate is a Student Ambassador for The Vassar Institute for the Liberal Arts. Her role, specifically centered around supporting the development of this signature program, has given her the opportunity to work within the Office of Community-Engaged Learning. Within the office, she also is a member of the communications team. In her free time, Kate enjoys writing, drawing, discovering new music, and long walks in the woods. Kate is passionate about finding ways to engage and learn from her community and is part of EngagePk and VELLOP, two Vassar organizations focused on fostering connections within Poughkeepsie.
Lili Walker
Lili is a second-year student at Vassar, originally from Los Angeles, California. She is an English major and a prospective Sociology double major, drawn to the ways storytelling, music, and community shape our collective experiences. Lili has worked in the Office of Community-Engaged Learning for two years. This year, her work as an assistant in Community-Engaged course and partnership programming has deepened her passion for bridging academic inquiry with real-world engagement. Outside of academics, Lili loves getting lost in a good book, spending time with friends, playing the clarinet, and embracing new experiences. Lili is passionate about hands-on creativity, whether through arts and crafts or experimenting with different forms of making.
Robyn Sheridan
Robyn is an Assistant Professor of Education, co-coordinator of the Social Justice Educational Studies MPS program and affiliate in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at (SUNY) New Paltz. She considers the body a critical site of inquiry in scholarship and pedagogy. Her current scholarship considers the limitations of the white body (bodies of knowledge, physical bodies) within the context of literacy situations and reading orientations. She enjoys music making, growing veggies and flowers, and spending time with her family.
Abstract
Transgressing Borders: Reimagining Education and the Role of Learning in Community is a multi-day gathering aimed at reimagining and bridging communities of knowledge. Through programming, it is our hope to generate space for educators, thinkers, and practitioners, from multiple backgrounds, to learn from each other while expanding networks of practice, action, resource, and healing.
We aspire to transgress campus-community barriers to center epistemic justice, experiential knowledge, relationship-building, and critical inquiry. The Office of Community Engaged Learning is partnering with SUNY New Paltz’s Social Justice Education program to create an incubator for place-based knowledge holders and formal educators to reimagine education through intergenerational and intercultural learning connections.
The program proposal aligns with the Institute’s goals of creating a public classroom for academic and place-based experts to cultivate relationships through learning, action, and reflection around crucial themes and contemporary challenges. Topics will include the following: Housing/Food Security & Justice, Abolition, Mind, Body, Health & Wellness, Epistemic Justice, Art-Making for Liberation. The gathering will also offer resource sharing through access to community advisors from multiple sectors in what we are calling our “community clinics.”
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