What Does It Mean to Be American?

On April 28, 2021, the Georgetown Art Galleries and the Georgetown Humanities Initiative co-hosted the interactive conversation “What Does It Mean to Be American?,” conceptualized and moderated by Philippa P.B. Hughes, Social Sculptor and Chief Creative Strategist at CuriosityConnects.us as well as the founder of Looking for America.

With this initiative, Philippa Hughes brings people together from across the political spectrum and the country to explore what it means to be American in a deeply polarized society. She relies on art and storytelling as the foundation for creating deliberative dialogue that sparks humanizing conversations aimed at building relationships that can transform society.

At Georgetown, she moderated a dialogue between Mike Gonzalez, (Senior Fellow, Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy and Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Fellow at The Heritage Foundation), and Sherrill Roland (an interdisciplinary artist who challenges ideas around controversial social and political constructs and generates a safe space to process, question, and share; founder of The Jumpsuit Project, inspired by his prison experience for a crime he did not commit).

In the last portion of the interactive program, all attendees joined the dialogue aimed at broadening worldviews in a humanizing virtual experience. They were paired in randomly selected break-out rooms to share what being an American meant to them.