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Programs

We will use the definition given in the National Foundation for the Humanities charter as the basis for determining the eligibility of proposed projects:

“The humanities include, but are not limited to, the following fields: history, philosophy, languages, literature, linguistics, archeology, jurisprudence, history and criticism of the arts, ethics, comparative religion, and those aspects of the social sciences employing historical or philosophical approaches. This last category includes social and cultural anthropology, sociology, political theory, international relations, and other subjects concerned with questions of value.”

Engagement and Opportunity

The Center maintains the following programs to promote the humanities at UF and beyond:

Grant and Fellowship Support in the Humanities

The Center website maintains extensive lists for graduate, faculty and postdocs, digital humanities, and public humanities funding opportunities and resources. With support from the CLAS Dean’s Office and UF Office of Research since 2010, the Center also runs grant-writing events and proposal review opportunities. The Center is proud to list winners of grants and fellowships in the humanities on its “In the News” pages.

Public Humanities

UF is a member institution of Imagining America, a national consortium that promotes the civic role of the arts, humanities, and design. The Center is developing collaborative programs with communities on and off campus to build, support, and publicize humanities initiatives that foster public scholarship and civic engagement. In 2010, the Center began collaborating with the Alachua County Library District and entities at UF to organize public and guest speaker series. To date, these series have explored higher education (Rehumanizing the University: New Perspectives on the Liberal Arts), rebuilding Haiti (Haiti’s Challenges: Rebuilding Lives & Nation in the Earthquake’s Aftermath), the future of libraries (Imagining the Library: Books in Public Life from Late Antiquity to the Digital Age), and technologies of surveillance (Tracking Citizens and Subjects: Evolving Technologies of Identity). View current resources available to support public humanities work.

Humanities Working Groups

Support and Oversight

The Center also oversees the following granting programs:

Support for Workshops and Speaker Series in the Humanities

To help sustain some of the best and most exciting work taking place within the humanities and to build bridges between the humanities and related fields, the Center awards roughly $30,000 yearly from the Rothman Endowment, Jerome A. Yavitz Foundation, the Humanities Fund, and the Yulee Endowment to faculty and graduate students for the purpose of inviting innovative faculty from outside the University to participate in public workshops, speaker series, and other collaborations that promote interdisciplinary themes.

Library Enhancement Program in the Humanities

First given in 2009, this grant program allows faculty to expand the existing University of Florida library and archival collections in areas in and related to the humanities that are currently under-served. Resources may include print, digital, or audio-visual media that enhance scholarly research and teaching in the humanities and related disciplines. Requests that address the needs of broader constituencies of the University beyond the immediate applicants are judged especially favorably. The Center expects to be able to award three grants of up to $5000 from the Rothman Endowment on a yearly basis. See previous recipients of the Library Enhancement Program grant.

Interdisciplinary Team-Teaching in the Humanities

The Center has worked since 2010 in conjunction with the University of Florida Honors Program and with support from the Rothman Endowment to encourage and permit faculty members in the humanities to team-teach an innovative undergraduate course with a colleague in a different department or college. This program aims to catalyze relationships between faculty in separate disciplines, and encourage faculty members across the university to explore potential collaborative research or creative projects in and related to the humanities. The program currently sponsors two to three courses per year. See a list of team-taught courses.

Rothman Summer Fellowships in the Humanities

With the objective of supporting faculty to advance their careers, the Center has created fellowships for ranked and other faculty in the humanities. These grants, given since 2010, will allow recipients to make significant progress on existing creative/research projects. Although the competition for Summer Fellowships in the Humanities is open to all faculty, special consideration is given to ranked faculty whose projects will support their bids for promotion to associate or full professor status. The Center generally awards four to six fellowships of $1500-$3000 yearly from the Rothman Endowment. See previous recipients of the Rothman Summer Fellowships.

Tedder Family Doctoral Fellowships in the Humanities

To support dissertation-level graduate students at the University of Florida, the Center has created two to three grants of $2000 per year with support of the Tedder Family Endowment. Given since 2012, these awards permit doctoral candidates to travel to archives, field sites, and libraries, or to acquire resources for their research projects that are otherwise unavailable at the University of Florida. After receiving the award, recipients present their research to the university community. See previous recipients of the Tedder Family Doctoral Fellowships.

Programs in the Public Humanities

In order to encourage and enhance collaborations between the University of Florida and off-campus individuals, groups, and institutions, the Center has offered grants up to $3,000 to support public programs rooted in one or more of the humanities disciplines since 2013. The Center intends to foster, support, and publicize humanities initiatives that engage the public in thoughtful and informed dialogue outside of the UF campus. These programs will draw on the human expertise of both UF and community partners as co-applicants to this program. See previous recipients of the Programs in the Public Humanities grant.

Publication Subvention

Since 2013 and in recognition of the growing need for humanities publication support, the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere (CHPS) spends up to $10,000 per annum from the Robert and Margaret Rothman Endowment to fund a program for UF faculty publishing research in the humanities. In the case of subvention requests from CLAS faculty, it will do so with support from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (which will match up to $5,000 in funding per annum). Faculty in the College of the Arts will be directed to apply for a $1000 College of the Arts Research Funding award, available three times yearly, overseen by the COTA Research Committee, after which their applications will be forwarded to CHPS for supplementary funding. Faculty in the College of Design, Construction and Planning will be able to apply for half of the amounts listed. See previous Publication Subvention recipients.