Speaker Series: Rethinking the Public Sphere III: Transforming Institutions
In 2021-22, the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere will continue its multiyear series Rethinking the Public Sphere, with its third installation reflecting on Transforming Institutions. A diverse lineup of speakers will address a range of different institutions and their contexts from a variety of perspectives and disciplines, including law, health science, urban studies, and the humanities. In October 2021, Prof. Michele Bratcher Goodwin (Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Director, Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy, University of California, Irvine) will reflect on questions of equity in global health policies. Paul M. Farber (Director, Monument Lab, Philadelphia, and Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Public Art & Space, University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design) will share how the Monument Lab is rethinking monuments in public spaces in Philadelphia in early November 2021.
In the 2022 spring semester, Brent Leggs (Executive Director, African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund) will lecture on preserving African American cultural heritage on the national level and engage in conversation about Gainesville on a local level as well. Joy Connolly (President, American Council of Learned Societies, former interim president of The Graduate Center of The City University of New York, distinguished professor of classics) will conclude the speaker series by presenting a vision of rethinking the humanities in March 2022.
Conversations in the Neighborhood
In 2021-2022, Conversations in the Neighborhood: Let’s Talk about Music will invite its audiences to think about their musical experiences. It will stress that music is a tapestry woven in visible and invisible historical imageries. It will raise the following questions in dialogue with humanities scholars and artists: How is music made? Where do artists find their inspiration? What role do songs play in our lives? What do we want music to do? This public humanities series will begin in September 2021 and end in March 2022. The series will have five events, allowing Gainesville’s communities to come together.