Michele+Root-Bernstein+Ren+Hullender


 * CS40. Michele Root-Bernstein & Ren Hullender ** – //Inventing Imaginary Worlds: From Make-Believe Play to Creative Strategy//

May 28 Saturday 10:45-12:15 PM HM 138

In this hands-on, minds-on workshop, participants invent an imaginary world and explore in that personal experience the links between play, creative imagination and knowledge construction. The goal is to stimulate new perspectives on the role of play (and worldplay) in classroom learning and in mature endeavor across the arts and sciences.

Affiliation/Bio: Michigan State University (Adjunct Faculty, Dept. of Theatre), rootber3@msu.edu. Michele Root-Bernstein studies creative imagination across the arts and sciences. With her husband Robert Root-Bernstein, she is co-author of //Sparks// //of Genius, The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People// (Houghton Mifflin, 1999), as well as numerous articles on body thinking, polymathy and creative education. Together, Michele and Bob lecture, consult and present workshops. Recently, they delivered the opening keynote speech at the May 2010 UNESCO 2nd World Conference on Arts Education in Seoul. They blog on creativity at . Michele received a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1975 and a Ph.D. in history from Princeton University in 1981. Her first book, //Boulevard Theater and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century Paris// won the Sierra Book Award for Best Book from the Western Association of Women Historians in 1985. She also co-authored //Honey, Mud, Maggots and Other Medical Marvels// (Houghton Mifflin, 1997), a look at the creative use of folk remedies in modern hospital settings. In addition to her scholarship, Michele has published creative non-fiction and writes haiku. Featured as an emerging haiku poet in //A New Resonance, 6//, she appears in haiku journals across the U.S. and Canada. Michele has taught poetry and prose in elementary, secondary and university classrooms. As a Kennedy Center teaching artist, she co-presents a writing/dancing workshop offered through the John F. Kennedy Center's Partners in Education Program. Currently an adjunct faculty member at Michigan State University, Michele is part of an interdisciplinary research team investigating connections between arts practice, innovation and economic development. In solo work, she studies the invention of imaginary worlds in childhood and adulthood, and the role of that worldplay in cultivating creative giftedness. Co-presenter: Ren Hullender is an assistant professor of art education at Central Michigan University. A practicing educator for 35 years, Ren received his Ph.D. from The University of Georgia in 2010. Ren uses arts-based research methodologies to explore the complex metaphors by which understanding, meaning, and possibility are constructed in everyday life. His educational research focuses on the embodied cognitive dynamics of art-making and the use of art-making and play as pedagogical strategies.