After a comparatively quiet summer, I am looking forward to a busy year of events and activities at the University of Florida! The Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere is open for business once again in its fourth year in 200 Walker Hall on the main campus of University of Florida.
As is its custom, the Center has planned an exciting year of lectures and co-sponsored events, including film series, conferences, performances, and workshops, on campus and in the community with the support of the Rothman Endowment and the Humanities Fund. We are looking forward to the visits of scholars and artists from around the globe to Gainesville, and welcome the members of the University of Florida and the North Central Florida community more generally to join us in a broad variety of academic and cultural initiatives in the humanities and allied subjects.
This year will bring the last semester of an eighteen-month-long series entitled “Rehumanizing the University: New Perspectives on the Liberal Arts”. This series has been an exciting opportunity to bring members of the UF and Gainesville communities together to explore important events and topics in the past and present of universities that are integral to shaping the future of higher education. We are also proud to be supporting lectures, workshops, and performances on subjects as diverse as African memoirs, gardens in history, Hispanic linguistics, African American men, the Holocaust and the Middle Ages, Harry Potter’s world, contemporary music, and film and philosophy. For a third year, the Center is also co-sponsoring the upcoming Latino Film Festival in Gainesville, organized by the Latina Women’s League, and the Samuel Proctor Oral History program’s annual trip to the Mississippi Delta to conduct interviews with civil rights activists.
In addition to the events publicized on our calendar (www.humanities.ufl.edu/calendar), the Center has awarded two grants from the Rothman Endowment to campus partners that will have a direct benefit to the North Florida community. One has supported the expansion of the medical humanities collection at the Criser Cancer Resource Center, which is part of Shands Cancer Hospital, and the second has supported an online exhibition of a 17th century gilt wood bodhisattva in the North Gallery of the new David A. Cofrin Asian Art Wing of the Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida. With the support of the Rothman Endowment, the Center also awarded three Summer Humanities Fellowships to UF faculty members in support of their research: Professors Shifra Armon (Spanish and Portuguese Studies), Connor O’Dwyer (European Studies), and Galina Rylkova (Languages, Literatures, and Cultures).The first recipients of the Tedder Family Doctoral Fellowships in the Humanities are Andrei Gandila (History) and Robin Globus (Religion), and the first Rothman Doctoral Fellow in the Humanities is Stéphanie Borios (Anthropology). Please join us for brown-bag presentations and discussions of their innovative research projects at the Center in spring and fall 2013.
With support from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Office of Research, the Center continues its second year of grant-writing events in the humanities. Having offered a series of workshops on grant-writing during the past year and a half, along with providing grant support and proposal review services, the Center has further expanded its website detailing UF support for grant-writing and internal and external grant opportunities in the humanities. Our listings feature a broad variety of opportunities for faculty and graduate students, including those concentrated on public and digital work in the humanities. This academic year, in addition to offering general programs on grant-writing in the humanities for faculty and graduate students, the Center will continue its lunchtime series on the digital humanities that began last year under the direction of the Center’s Associate Director, Sophia Krzys Acord, and Laurie Taylor, Digital Humanities Librarian at UF’s George A. Smathers Libraries.
So, please keep an eye out for the Center’s annual call for proposals for workshops, colloquia, library enhancement grants, summer fellowships, and team-teaching, all supported by the Robert and Margaret Rothman Endowment for the Humanities and the Humanities Fund. You can also sign up for our weekly electronic newsletter by writing to humanities-center at ufl.edu.
As director, I welcome feedback and suggestions regarding the Center’s current and future endeavors. Please accept my heartfelt thanks for your support.
Bonnie Effros
Rothman Chair and Director
Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere
University of Florida
6 September 2012
beffros@ufl.edu