The UF Intersections: Animating Conversations with the Humanities project launched with the award of a $400,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the University of Florida in 2017. The goal of the Intersections program is to explore grand-challenge questions rooted in the humanities.
As observed by UF President Kent Fuchs in his welcome to the Spring 2021 Intersections Symposium, “Making a difference starts with asking the difficult and complex questions that the humanities are best equipped to answer… and steering the conversation purposefully and in a fruitful direction.”
At the core of the Intersections program are four grand-challenge questions created by interdisciplinary faculty working groups who received Intersections Research-Into-Teaching Grants. In addition to conducting research and organizing creative activities together, each Intersections Group translated their research into teaching to introduce undergraduate students to their question, its importance, and how to address it.
Each group invited doctoral students to join their collaborative work. These Intersections Group doctoral student members conducted related dissertation research to each group’s grand-challenge question in 2018-2020. Dr. Srimayee Basu, a member of the Intersections Group on Mass Incarceration who completed her Ph.D. in English in Summer 2020, explained that her participation in the Intersections program encouraged her to think about the humanities collaboratively and “made me push the disciplinary contours of my project.” In her new position as Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of California, Irvine, she plans to continue to engage in interdisciplinary humanities research.
HOW CAN WE ENGAGE ETHICAL ISSUES IN PUBLIC LIFE?
Convened by Prof. Anna Peterson (Religion) and Prof. Jaime Ahlberg (Philosophy) with members from Journalism, Smathers Libraries, and Brown Center for Leadership and Service.
This group developed two general-education Quest courses, created an undergraduate certificate in Ethics and Society, and organized Ethics Poster Fairs to showcase student projects across courses. Based on focus groups with UF students about their comfort talking about politically divisive issues, the group organized a series of Ethics Cafés and Ethics Panels to facilitate conversation on politically divisive subjects among UF students and the greater community.
HOW DO BLACK AND LATINX PEOPLE SHAPE GLOBAL AND LOCAL CULTURES, POLITICS AND ECONOMICS?
Convened by Prof. Manoucheka Celeste (Gender, Sexualities and Women’s Studies Research) and Dr. Margarita Vargas- Betancourt (Smathers Libraries) with members from History; Oral History; Languages, Literatures and Cultures; Gender, Sexualities and Women’s Studies Research; Psychology; Journalism; Latin American Studies; and Sociology.
Based on their research about how Blackness travels globally and through the Americas, this group organized speaker series and events on Black and Latinx Knowledge Formations and created the dual-language online Haitian American Dream Timeline through the Smathers Libraries. In Summer 2020, they developed an online wellness workshop series for people of color.
WHAT WOULD THE WORLD LOOK LIKE WITHOUT MASS INCARCERATION?
Convened by Prof. Jodi Schorb (English) and Stephanie Birch (Smathers Libraries) with members from History, African American Studies, Levin College of Law, and Latin American Studies.
This group began offering the general-education Quest course “Imagining Social Justice: The Long Civil Rights Movement.” Based on their research on how to advance decarceration locally, this group hosted a series of conversations featuring individuals impacted by mass incarceration, connections between incarceration and disability rights, and creative and arts-based approaches to decarceration while also expanding library resources.
HOW DO TECHNOLOGIES INFLUENCE OUR LIVES, THEN AND NOW?
Convened by Prof. Eleni Bozia (Classics) and Marty Hylton (Historic Preservation) with Members from the Digital Worlds Institute; Smathers Libraries; Languages, Literatures and Cultures; Political Science; and Computer and Information Science and Engineering.
This group created a team-taught course “Imagineering the Technosphere” to help students examine the social and cultural dimensions of technologies from the past to the future through playing the augmented reality “UF Quest Game.” This group also hosted a series of events examining how humans can use technologies and digital storytelling tools to address critical social and environmental threats today.