TDPS Prof Appointed Faculty Administrator for Foxworth Creative Enterprise Initiative

Dr. Faedra Carpenter, Director of Undergraduate Theatre Studies at the University of Maryland, has been appointed by the Dean of the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies (TDPS) to be the faculty administrator for the Foxworth Creative Enterprise Initiative.

The Initiative is a three-year program piloted by the College of Arts and Humanities that seeks to enrich arts and humanities scholarship and promote the use of the arts and humanities in solving society’s problems.

Dr. Carpenter, a TDPS associate professor, is a theatre scholar, professional dramaturg and cultural critic whose work centers around the intersectionality of race, gender and sexuality both in staged performances and in everyday life.

“The notion of working in an ‘ensemble’ is incredibly important to me,” Carpenter wrote. “The community engagement aspect of the Foxworth Creative Enterprise Initiative taps into that same premise: it is about working as a collective.”

The 2013-2014 inaugural Foxworth Initiative funded courses including Food, Trauma, and Sustainability; Latina/o Transmigration and Transnationalism and Community Partnership for the Performing Arts. Each course, or “Creative Enterprise Team,” is teamed with community partners, including Prince George’s County Food Equity Council and Casa De Maryland. This encourages the inclusion of the arts and humanities disciplines in the application of solutions to pressing issues including food insecurity, climate change, immigration, poverty and racism.

Carpenter wrote, “Last year’s amazing courses attest to the fact that classrooms need not have borders; that the exchange of ideas is always best a bilateral one; that acts of teaching and learning are often one and the same; and that embodied, public scholarship matters and can make a tangible difference in people’s lives.”