The Library Enhancement Program in the Humanities, supported by the Robert and Margaret Rothman Endowment for the Humanities, has since 2009 steadily expanded what’s possible for scholars at the University of Florida. The program provides grants of up to $4,000 to support under-resourced areas of the humanities and deliver benefits well beyond a single course or department.
During the 2024–2025 grant cycle, this mission came into focus through three awards that broadened collections and impact alike — strengthening manuscript studies, environmental humanities and modern literary scholarship.
Manuscripts that (Re)make the Classics
For Eleni Papadopoulou, a Ph.D. student in classics and instructor of Latin, the grant provided for acquisition of critical editions and paleographical tools that illuminate the material history of ancient texts. Her project, Collection Enhancement in Manuscript Studies, expands resources in papyrology and textual criticism — fields that rely on access to rare editions and newly revised collections of ancient manuscripts.
“The library already has an important collection of editions of papyri and basic manuals for the study of manuscript sources,” Papadopoulou said. “However, as new fragments continually come to the surface, and especially with advances in technology in terms of their preservation, the need arises to revise the original edition. The editions that will be acquired cover a wide range of re-editions with corrections, revisions and suggestions to the already published ones… and combination of old and new passages to reconstruct even relatively ‘established’ texts.”
Additions such as volumes from the “Corpus dei Papiri Filosofici Greci e Latini” and publications from the University of Cologne will serve not only scholars of Greek and Latin rhetoric and philosophy, but also researchers in history, law, mathematics and astronomy who study early written records. The project strengthens UF’s ability to train the next generation of scholars to work directly with manuscript sources, bridging ancient evidence and contemporary analysis.
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Environmental humanities, ecopoetics and immersive learning
For Gabriele Belletti, assistant professor of Italian and French, the grant supports a multilingual ecopoetics collection paired with scholarship on virtual and artificial environments that connects literature to contemporary environmental questions. The aim is twofold: fill a clear gap in UF’s holdings, and equip instructors and students to explore how poetry and literature engage urgent environmental issues through contemporary technologies.
The acquisitions align with Belletti’s SHINE project (Sciences Humanities Intelligence Nurturing Emotions), an interdisciplinary effort that integrates AI-supported, immersive teaching to heighten engagement and retention around climate and sustainability content. The collection will support courses in literature, ecocriticism, ecology and sustainability — including Italian environmental humanities — and provide a bridge for museum and science partners seeking experiential learning resources. Forthcoming research, including “Artificial Intelligence and Embodied Authorship: Initial Reflections on Eco-Poetic Authenticity” (Journal of Italian Studies), will draw on these materials.
“By bridging traditional scholarship with technological advancements, particularly in AI and immersive education, this expansion will position the library at the forefront of research and pedagogy,” Belletti said.
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Reintroducing Oscar Wilde for a New Generation
For Taylor Morris, an English Ph.D. student, the award helps complete UF’s set of the Oxford University Press “Complete Works of Oscar Wilde,” the field’s standard scholarly edition, and adds recent monographs and essay collections. While the library holds the first volume of the OUP series, completing the set and updating secondary literature brings UF’s collection to current academic standards.
Building on that foundation, the additions reinforce longstanding strengths in Victorian studies and bolster adjacent areas — modernism, aesthetics, empire and post-colonial studies, and film/media. They also meet clear student demand: undergraduates consistently gravitate to Wilde in coursework and research papers, and dependable, research-grade texts make it easier to design assignments that move from close reading to archival and editorial questions.
“It is striking to what degree (students) latch onto Wilde and his ‘Dorian Gray,’” Morris noted.
Expanding UF’s Wilde holdings with the Oxford editions and recent criticism gives those students authoritative texts to grow with — supporting advanced faculty research while creating clear on-ramps for undergraduates stepping into sustained humanities study.
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Why It matters
Across these three projects, a pattern emerges: collections are infrastructure. Updated editions change how texts are read and taught; multilingual, technology-inflected resources seed new interdisciplinary collaborations; and definitive scholarly sets anchor research fields and attract students to sustained study. The Library Enhancement Program ensures UF’s humanities collections remain dynamic, capable of meeting emerging questions in manuscript studies, environmental humanities and literary scholarship.