The Center has developed 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 civic engagement (Rethinking the Public Sphere), our collective mortality (Death), the changing nature of work (The Work of the Humanities), political discourse (“Civil” Society?), higher education (Rehumanizing the University), rebuilding Haiti (Haiti’s Challenges), the future of libraries (Imagining the Library), and technologies of surveillance (Tracking Citizens and Subjects). View our archive of Past Speaker Series below or explore current resources available to support public humanities work.
Past Speaker Series
Fall 2022 – Spring 2023: Rethinking the Public Sphere Part IV: Public Humanities
Fall 2021 – Spring 2022: Rethinking the Public Sphere Part III: Transforming Institutions
Fall 2020 – Spring 2021: Rethinking the Public Sphere Part II: Data and Democracy
Fall 2020 – Spring 2021: UF Synergies
Fall 2019 – Spring 2020: Rethinking the Public Sphere Part I: Race and the Promise of Participation
Fall 2019 – Spring 2020: UF Synergies
Fall 2018 – Spring 2019: UF Synergies
Fall 2017 – Spring 2018: UF Synergies
Fall 2016 – Spring 2017: Death: Confronting the Great Divide
Spring 2016: Imagining Florida: The Place We Call Home
Fall 2014 – Spring 2015: The Work of the Humanities: Critical Thinking in Life and Labor
Fall 2013 – Spring 2014: “Civil” Society? On the Future Prospects of Meaningful Dialogue
Spring 2013: Humanizing Conversations
Fall 2011 – Fall 2012: Rehumanizing the University: New Perspectives on the Liberal Arts
Spring 2011: 2011 Caleb and Michele Grimes Conference: Haiti’s Challenges- Rebuilding Lives and Nation in the Earthquakes Aftermath
Fall 2010: Imagining the Library: Books in Public Life from Late Antiquity to the Digital Age
Spring 2010: 2010 Caleb and Michele Grimes Conference: Who Are You? Criminal Identification Technologies and Practices from the Nineteenth Century to the Present
Past Programs
2015-2019 Humanities and the Sunshine State
Humanities and the Sunshine State was a set of two week-long summer residential programs that introduce high school students and educators to cutting-edge research in the humanities that helps us to understand Florida’s pressing environmental crises and ways to address them by working with classrooms and communities.
Past Calendars and Events
Events from 2017 on are archived in the Center’s searchable Web calendar.
**Please view our Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere Digital Collection, which includes materials from the Center’s public events and programming.