I’m pleased to announce another exciting schedule of events and activities from the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere. This academic year, the sixth year of the Center’s existence in Walker Hall on the UF campus, we will carry on the rich array of lectures and workshops established by the Center and its founding director, Dr. Bonnie Effros. I will serve as Acting Director while Dr. Effros is in residence as a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University. It’s both an honor and a privilege to hold the position; I know from my own background in public history that institutions like the Center can serve as essential touchstones for building a rich intellectual tradition here in Gainesville and beyond. In addition to my new role as Acting Director, our graduate student assistant, Matthew Delvaux, has departed for doctoral study at Boston College, and we are pleased to welcome on board Sarah Harms, a BA/MA student in History, to manage the Center’s website and support the Center’s suite of programs. The deck won’t be completely shuffled, though, as Dr. Sophia Krzys Acord will continue to work as the Associate Center Director; both Sarah and I plan to draw on Dr. Acord’s energy and expertise whenever we can! So the personnel might be slightly different this year, but the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere will continue to promote its core mission of enriching UF’s vibrant and diverse intellectual life.
Our speaker series this year is entitled, “Civil” Society? On the Future Prospects of Meaningful Dialogue, and it promises to fulfill the Center’s core mission of demonstrating how the humanities inform public life. Over the course of the year, we’ll see how the arguments over global warming, race relations, and the memory of past events can divide us, but might also open up vital lines of dialogue. Collectively, these talks offer a provocative and informative example of how the humanities help us to understand and create solutions for critical debates both within and beyond the UF community. View the lineup of speakers and topics.
The Center is also proud to offer support for a number of programs in the upcoming academic year that reinforce the rich diversity of UF’s cultural landscape. The Rothman Endowment is helping to bring three plenary speakers at the 28th Arabic Linguistics Symposium; a public lecture by Dr. Cristobal Bianchi, a founding member of the Chilean art collective Casagrande; a conference entitled “Feminists Publics, Current Engagements: Gender/Culture/Society Forty Years Later”; a speaker series examining the role of historical memory in contemporary activism; and the tenth annual Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival (FLEXfest). The Rothman Endowment also went towards the enrichment of the University of Florida’s library collection in a number of important areas. Support went to Malini Schueller to enhance UF’s holdings in Asian American studies; to Elizabet Liminyana Vico and Ana de Prada Pérez to acquire Catalan works; to Jack Kugelmass and Rebecca Jefferson for Yiddish microfilms; and to enhance further the Harn Museum’s Bishop Library. In public humanities events, the Center is also again co-sponsoring the upcoming Latino Film Festival in Gainesville, which has been organized by the Latina Women’s League, as well as the Samuel Procter Oral History Program’s 2013-14 research trip to the Mississippi Delta.
The Center has continued to support faculty and graduate student research as well. Faculty members Jennifer Rea, Eleni Bozia, and Robert Wagman from the Classics Department, as well as Robert Kawashima from the Religion Department, all received Rothman Summer Humanities Fellowships to aid in their research. Four graduate students also received support from the Center’s fellowship programs: Nicole Cox (History) and Ryan Morini (Anthropology) are 2013-14 Tedder Family Doctoral Fellows, and Allen Kent (History/Oral History) and Anna Lankina (History) are 2013-14 Rothman Doctoral Fellows. Please join us for presentations and discussions of their innovative research in the upcoming academic year. With support from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the UF Office of Research, the Center continues its third year of grant-writing events in the humanities. Along with providing ongoing grantwriting support, workshops, and proposal review services, the Center has further expanded its Web pages detailing internal and external funding opportunities for faculty and graduate students in the humanities, including those concentrated on public and digital work. This academic year, the Center will continue to co-convene with the UF Smathers Libraries a lunchtime series of the Digital Humanities Working Group. And, the Center is pleased to host the website of the newly inaugurated Collective for the Interdisciplinary Study of Medicine and Culture, with a mission to transcend disciplinary barriers and connect medical study with other fields. We look forward to supporting these and other exciting interdisciplinary groups and collaborative projects in and linked to the humanities at UF.
Throughout the year, the Center will issue calls for proposals for workshops, colloquia, library enhancement grants, summer fellowships, and team-taught courses, all supported by the Robert and Margaret Rothman Endowment for the Humanities, the Humanities Fund, and the Tedder Family Endowment. Please also sign up for our weekly electronic newsletter — the UF Humanities Agenda — by writing to humanities-center@ufl.edu. We also invite you to follow the Center on Facebook (UFHumanities).
As Acting Director this year, I welcome your feedback and suggestions regarding the Center’s current and future endeavors. Thank you so much for your participation and support!
Sean Patrick Adams
Acting Director
Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere
University of Florida
27 August 2013
spadams@ufl.edu