Special Issue: Improvisation and the Liberal Arts

Abstract

The inspiration for this special issue of Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation was born from a conference that took place at Amherst College in 2014. Sponsored by the Alliance to Advance Liberal Arts Colleges, the conference brought together faculty researchers and artists from fifteen liberal arts colleges and research universities in North America. Representing fields as varied as biology, philosophy, English, music, dance, visual art, comparative literature, and computer science, the conference centered on ways in which improvisation is the focus of research and pedagogy in the liberal arts. Lofty in our aspirations, we adopted a simple premise about both improvisation and the liberal arts: like improvisation, the liberal arts advance our understanding of how individuals and communities interact with and relate to one another, and derive meaning from human experience.The energy following the conference led to a call for submissions for this special issue, an ambitious call hoping to present scholarship, creative work, and pedagogies that positions improvisation (in any expressive modality) within or in relation to the liberal arts, broadly defined. Among the four special topics articles included in this issue, is one written by a presenter at the conference (Dominic Poccia). Although not included here, several other essays were also submitted for the current issue that focus on dance performance and pedagogy, architecture, and intensive liberal arts pedagogy. We hope these will be included in a follow-up special issue focused on improvisation and the liberal arts.We take the "liberal arts" to refer to several interrelated concepts: a type of intellectual inquiry for which reason, analysis, and interpretation are primary modes; a particular type of educational institution that centers this philosophy, namely, the liberal arts college; a group of academic fields (artes liberales) and an educational system that traces back to ancient Greece; and a pedagogical system that has served as the basis for contemporary higher education. Today, the liberal arts are both a mode of inquiry and a fundamentally interdisciplinary spacestriving to privilege no particular field, to embrace equally the humanities, the arts, and the sciences, and to nurture and create connections across these disparate disciplines-within which different knowledges come together to create a broader, more collaborative and community-oriented understanding of humanity, our various perspectives and locations within the world (what some call a "well-informed citizenry"1).