Kevin Bott has been appointed associate director of Imagining America-the national consortium of more than 80 colleges and universities committed to public scholarship in the arts, humanities, and design, currently hosted by Syracuse University. His appointment is effective July 1.
Bott will work in collaboration with Jan Cohen-Cruz, director of Imagining America (IA) and a university professor at SU, to help lead the consortium and develop IA programs. He will initiate and sustain relationships with colleges and universities, recruiting members, organizing conferences, managing and assisting member-institution representatives and producing the biannual newsletter.
Bott has previously worked with Imagining America on various projects, including serving as IA’s director of events and publications since 2008. During this time he has also been the director of the PAGE (Publicly Active Graduate Education) program, the mission of which is to support graduate students and early-career scholars pursuing publicly-engaged academic work in the arts, humanities and design. For his doctoral dissertation, entitled “A Ritual for Return: Investigating the Process of Creating an Original Rite of Passage with Formerly Incarcerated Men,” Bott examined the ethical challenges he confronted while creating theater with four men who were transitioning between prison and the community. He is the former director of education for the New York State prison arts nonprofit, Rehabilitation for the Arts (RTA), and has been facilitating theater workshops and original productions in various New York State prisons since 2006. In addition to his work in U.S. prisons, Bott has implemented applied theater initiatives in public schools, drug rehabilitation clinics, and at a minimum-security prison in northern Uganda.
