Timothy K. Eatman’s 2024 Plenary Lecture: Challenging the Shrinking Imagination — and Inspiring Prophetic Vision at UMass

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Photo: Kimberly Manyanga

On Tuesday, October 8th, at 5:30 p.m., the UMass community gathered in the Student Union Ballroom for Timothy K. Eatman’s 2024 Plenary Lecture, Beware of the Shrinking Imagination. Dean Mari Castañeda welcomed the 200 attendees to the lecture and began with an introduction of Eatman, highlighting his past accomplishments and education.

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Eatman's goal was to inspire, stimulate, and push the attendees to recognize the declining imagination in our society; Photo: Austin Lee

When Eatman took the stage, he thanked the Commonwealth Honors College community for inviting him to speak. He then noted the importance of honors spaces in academia and the role they play. Eatman expressed his admiration for CHC students, recognizing their hard work in building intellectual character and virtues during their time as undergraduates.  

As he continued, Eatman discussed the main point of his lecture: the power of prophetic imagination, which, at its simplest, involves imagining a different world and new ways of doing things to challenge the status quo. He noted that we can only implement this type of thinking if we are aware of what he refers to as 'the shrinking imagination.' Throughout his speech, he aimed to encourage, provoke, and challenge the attendees to recognize the shrinking imagination he believes is troubling our society.

Eatman then discussed how much of his academic and professional career has been dedicated to working with programs that encourage and uplift prophetic imagination. One example is Imagining America (IA), a consortium that creates spaces within academia to generate and sustain deep, impactful knowledge and healing. At its basis, IA supports and uplifts the arts and humanities on campuses across the country.

Currently, Eatman serves as the inaugural dean of the Rutgers Honors Living-Learning Community (HLLC), and he has used the values of IA to shape the HLLC's curriculum. He noted that learning is more effective when we engage in practices like community engagement and art-making because these allow for prophetic imagining.

“The purpose of HLLC is to revolutionize honors, cultivate talent, and engage with the community” 

Before wrapping up the lecture, Eatman asked the audience to identify three things in their work that tend to move them toward shrinking imagination. 

Photo: Kimberly Manyanga

The 2024 Plenary Lecture ended with a Q&A session, during which students were invited to step up to the mic and ask Eatman their questions. With the time that allowed, several students were able to ask questions and engage in conversation with him. Students inquired about the impact of generative AI, the constraints of science-based thinking, and the fear of failure.During the Q&A session, attendees expressed that fear of failure and technical reasoning were some of the factors they felt prevented them from imagining or creating a different world. Eatman addressed their concerns, noting that failure is important because some individuals are so far outside the box that others perceive them as failures, when in reality, they are visionaries. 

The prevailing narrative focuses only on what you do right, rather than on what you do wrong and learn from.

Photo: Kimberly Manyanga