Introduction
Annually the four Title IV National Resource Centers at the University of Arizona, The Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS), the Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language, and Literacy (CERCLL), the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS), and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), combine to host the Globalizing the Community College Curricula Conference (GCCC). This conference aims to bring together community college educators nationwide to share their research and experiences integrating international topics into their lessons. Community college educators across all subjects and positions are welcome to present and apply.
2025 Conference
This year's conference will be held on January 17-18, 2025. This year's conference's theme, "Arts and Education without Borders," aims to explore innovative strategies and best practices for integrating global perspectives into community college curricula through the arts. Arts encompass a wide range of creative expressions that include visual arts, performing arts, literary arts, and more. Each form of art uses different mediums, techniques, and styles to convey ideas, emotions, and experiences. Arts in education play a vital role in fostering a well-rounded and holistic learning experience. By incorporating arts into the curriculum, educators help students develop essential life skills, enhance their academic abilities, and nurture their emotional and social well-being.
As our world becomes increasingly interconnected, it is crucial for community colleges to prepare students to thrive in a globalized society. The arts provide a unique platform for fostering cross-cultural understanding, empathy, critical thinking, and creative expression. The conference theme, “Arts and Education without Borders,” explores how the arts can be leveraged to globalize community college curricula, creating more inclusive and culturally responsive educational experiences for students, and preparing them for diverse, multicultural environments.
Alana Hernandez will give the keynote lecture at the University of Arizona Poetry Center on Friday, January 17 at 5:30 pm. This lecture is presented in collaboration with the Poetry Center, the College of Humanities, the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and the 9th Annual Globalizing the Community College Curricula Conference.
Hernandez is Senior Curator at the ASU Art Museum. In her curatorial practice, Hernandez co-creates and develops relational projects and exhibitions that amplify intersectional and multifaceted interpretations of Latinx art. She actively engages in a curatorial and methodological model that prioritizes visibility, decentralized institutional authorship, and community-embedded agency. She works directly with constituencies to facilitate meaning-making that is generative, mobilizing, and transformative. In recent years, much of Hernandez’s curatorial work centers on Latinx art and artists working with print and craft-based mediums and investigates how the aesthetic statements thus employed are integral, often political producers of cultural consciousness. Her practice endeavors to bolster critical engagement with U.S. Latinx art that is inclusive of Afro-Latinx, Indigenous, and queer histories, underscoring that these narratives are formative to an understanding of the histories of this country. She has recently organized artist projects with Carolina Aranibar-Fernández, Sam Frésquez, Luis Rivera Jimenez, Alejandro Macias, Sarah Zapata, Mariana Ramos Ortiz, and Estephania González. She is currently at work on a major retrospective of Carmen Lomas Garza.
Hernandez was previously Executive Director & Curator at CALA Alliance. She has held curatorial positions at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Páramo, Guadalajara, Mexico; Hunter East Harlem, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Phoenix Art Museum; and BRIC Arts Media, Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in several exhibition catalogues and online journals. Hernandez received her M.A. from CUNY Hunter College, where she specialized in Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art. She currently lives and works in Phoenix, Arizona.
This conference is free and will be meeting in-person only. Friday dinner and a light breakfast Saturday will be included for all participants.
View the two-day schedule here. More information is available on the conference website.
Registration is now closed.
For questions, please contact us at TVI-Outreach@arizona.edu.
Conference Timeline
- Early October: Call for Papers
- Mid-November: CfP Deadline
- Late November: Announcement of selected presenters
- January: Conference
Conference Location
The University of Arizona, Tucson
Previous Conferences
Embracing Counternarratives for Global Learning: The Eighth Annual GCCC Conference (2024)
A counternarrative is a response or alternative perspective that challenges or opposes a dominant or mainstream narrative. It provides a different interpretation of events, ideas, or cultural norms, often aiming to shed light on perspectives, experiences, or historical facts that might have been marginalized or overlooked by the dominant narrative. Counternarratives can serve various purposes, such as highlighting marginalized voices, exposing hidden truths, critiquing existing power structures, or promoting social change. They are commonly employed in social, political, and cultural contexts to offer a more inclusive and comprehensive understanding of complex issues. Consequently, counternarratives can play a significant role in shaping public discourse, challenging established norms, and encouraging critical thinking about prevailing narratives.
Add Food and Stir: The Seventh Annual GCCC Conference (2023)
Community Colleges are doing important work, educating a large percentage of post-secondary students to become part of a globalized world. As such, it is vital to internationalize the curricula of community college classes; the topic of food, as a universal need and cultural touchstone, provides an accessible gateway to the world. The conference offers an opportunity to learn from and share with colleagues across community college departments and campuses how you use the topics of food and cuisine to internationalize your curriculum.