2022 – 2023
Yiorgo Topalidis (Ph.D. student, Samuel Proctor Oral History Program), Sheila Payne (Alachua County Labor Coalition), and Adam Jordan (All Y’all Social Justice Collective)
Documenting White Anti-Racist Activism in the Gulf South
This project develops the oral history component of a new collaborative digital history project at the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program titled White Anti-Racist Activism in the Gulf South (WARA), in partnership with the Alachua County Labor Coalition and The All Y’all Social Justice Collective. WARA focuses on White anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-classist activism since 1980. This project concentrates on the oral history component of WARA to document the experiences of White social justice activists through their testimony and artifacts. Using that data, WARA researchers will present significant findings to the public in written vignettes and a series of five videos on a new website established for WARA.
Victor Del Hierro (Professor, English) and Tara Richardson (T. Mushell Cares)
Finding Rutledge
This project will create a documentary about the members and descendants of Rutledge, a community of formerly enslaved African Americans that was formed in Alachua county after Reconstruction, and how the decrease in Black-owned land in that area has impacted culture and contributed to the growth of northwest Gainesville from 1900 to today.
Belay Alem (Ph.D. student, Anthropology and Center for African Studies) and Carol Richardson (A. Quinn Jones Museum)
Heirs’ Property and Intergenerational Wealth: Initiating Public Discussion Series and Documentation of Human Memories in Black Neighborhoods
Belay Alem and Carol Richardson collaborate on this project representing their respective institutions, UF and the A. Quinn Jones Museum respectively. Their goal is to bring the African American Community to the discussion board to discuss stories about heirs’ properties. The project partners believe that heirs’ property is a topic worth discussion. People have a lot of emotions, memories, and histories attached to their built environment. This being the fact, the history of African Americans as it relates to build environment is less documented. The grant will help to launch this initiative.
Joashilia Jeanmarie (Undergraduate student, Sociology and Criminology & Law, African American Studies Program) and Natalia Naranjo (Alliance for Fair Food)
Promoting Haitian Creole Language Accessibility in Immokalee, Florida
In Southwest Florida, the agricultural community of Immokalee has increasingly become a popular destination for immigration and public health scholars, nonprofits, and community organizers. Although Haitian Creole (HC) is the second most represented language in households that do not speak English (Immokalee Census Data, 2020), public and academic literature on Immokalee’s immigrant population rarely include Haitians within their assessments while local community organizations often struggle to provide translation/interpretation, commonly relying on a single bilingual worker to support the entire organization. This project seeks to evaluate, provide resources for, and promote further Haitian Creole language accessibility (LA) in Immokalee, Florida.
Kleber Naula (Graduate student, Center for Latin American Studies) and Jose Yautibug (El Troje Community, Ecuador)
Recovering the Visual Memory of Comunidad El Troje, Ecuador in the United States (1954-2021)
The project will recover photos in the United States and take them to El Troje to contribute to historical memory which connects these two countries. The goal is to give back dignity to indigenous people in Troje , prepare a photo exhibition, and give them to the community. Troje, in Ecuador, is an indigenous community of native Quechua-speakers where Protestantism began an enormous awakening in 1954, even though the presence of religious missions from the United States started in 1902. Since the 1950s, religious missions and Peace Corps Volunteers took hundreds of pictures about indigenous that have not been exhibited and which have been stored in personal and institutional archives.
2021 – 2022
David Canton (Professor, African American Studies) and Dr. Rebekah Cordova (All Y’all Social Justice Education Collective)
Decolonizing the Curriculum: Black History and Experiences in Florida through an Arts-based Curriculum to Improve Racial Inequities for K-12 Teachers and Students
The workshop series consists of in-person and online arts-integrated workshops to help build lesson plans for K-12 curriculum with Alachua county teachers and advocates. It attends to the dire need for teachers to fulfill the Florida State Mandate to teach about the Ocoee Massacre and African American history. The materials co-created in the workshops will be available online for public accessibility on the websites of these organizations, and will be permanently housed in Samuel Proctor Oral History Program’s Joel Buchanan African American Studies Archive at the University of Florida.
Jeff Carney (Florida Institute for the Built Environment Resilience) and Dr. Marcy Trahan (The Joe Center for the Arts)
Port St. Joe: Finding Resilience on the Forgotten Coast
The interactive exhibition “Port St. Joe: Finding Resilience on the Forgotten Coast” will be hosted at the Joe Center for the Arts in Port St. Joe, FL. The exhibition will disseminate and actively build upon the results of a 2-year UF/community partnership across the city of Port St. Joe. It is organized by the UF Florida Resilient Cities program (FRC) in collaboration with The Joe Center for the Arts, the City of Port St. Joe, and community partners. This exhibition will celebrate the history of the communities’ recovery from Hurricane Mathew, assess progress on resilience to date, and re-connect (post COVID-19) with the community to reflect on the challenges that climate change poses to the cultural and societal growth of Port St. Joe.
Laura Gonzales (Professor, English) and Ms. Robin Lewy (Rural Women’s Health Project)
Designing a Multimedia Language Access Handbook for North Central Florida
The project highlights the language diversity present in this region, while also providing critical resources for organizations and agencies that support people who speak languages other than English. There is great need for language access services in this region, particularly for immigrant populations from racialized backgrounds. This handbook will include a website, print materials, a project launch event, and a touring exhibition that will travel throughout North Central Florida to showcase and share resources.
Victoria Grant (Hispanic Student Association) and Ericka Ghersi (Latina Women’s League)
Emerging Voices
In an effort to integrate transient UF students to the local community and local Gainesville community members to the University of Florida, the Hispanic Student Association, Office of Hispanic-Latinx Affairs, and the Gainesville Latina Women’s League are collaborating to support the continual learning of local underrepresented community members. This collaboration supports free English language and citizenship preparation classes for the Gainesville community. By providing the resources to encourage comfortability and strength in the international community of Gainesville, the project provides the environment needed for each of these folks to grow and prosper in safety and solidarity.
2020 – 2021
Anastasia Pantazopoulou (Graduate Student, Classics), Anthony Smith (Graduate student, Classics) and Ms. Lynn Little and Ms. Nevada Smith (Girls Place)
Growing Strong: Empowering Girls in the 21st Century
“Growing Strong: Empowering Girls in the 21st Century through Stories of Classical Female Mythological Figures and Contemporary Women” is addressing a major social challenge of our times, namely female empowerment. The UF and the Community partner seek to create an interactive, thought-provoking space for young girls to reflect on their identity as active community members and the multiple roles they can assume by discussing the stories of inspirational ancient Greco-Roman goddesses/figures alongside contemporary women. At a time when gender equality has not yet been realized, empowering girls to reach their full potential emerges as a crucial need. To actively contribute towards this goal, this program will open a dialogue between the UF Classics Department, which explores the language, literature, and culture of Ancient Mediterranean societies, and Gainesville’s middle-school community by engaging with the diverse participants at Girls Place. Our goal is to inspire girls of all backgrounds, ethnicities, and social status to become brave leaders and independent women. The project fosters an environment where the girls have the chance to connect with narratives about women’s identities and to consider their own roles in society.
John Nemmers (Curator of Architecture Archives and the Panama Canal Museum Collection, Smathers Libraries) and Carmen Grimes-Eccles (Pan Caribbean Sankofa, Inc.)
Caribbean Voices: Connecting People and Sharing Stories
The George A. Smathers Libraries in partnership with Pan Caribbean Sankofa, Inc., propose two public humanities programs, to be held in UF and Panama in April 2021, to examine the history and lives of the Caribbean people who lived and worked in the former Panama Canal Zone and in Panama. In 1999 longtime Canal employee Cecil Haynes described the tens of thousands of West Indian laborers who constructed the Canal as VIPs, or Very Invisible People, because their stories were largely unknown and their contributions were unrecognized. Proposed programs will address the importance of identity, community, religion, language, and culture in the face of the Caribbean diaspora and the segregation and racism faced in Panama and the U.S. In addition to raising awareness about the lives and roles of these Caribbean people, the programs are intended to foster dialogue between the academic community and the dispersed Caribbean communities. These public engagement opportunities will provide forums for Caribbean people to share their voices, perspectives, and experiences as a marginalized community and also as people of great intelligence, expertise, professionalism, good character, and high morale in spite of discrimination and racism.
Alejandro Acero Ayuda (Graduate student, Spanish and Portuguese Studies), Darian Hector (Graduate student, Spanish and Portuguese Studies) and Kamil Levitt (Immigrant Family Liaison of Alachua County Schools)
E-Telling: Social Patchwork and 21st-Century Literacies
Young learners´ development of 21st-century literacies can respond to an urgent social concern: the disintegration of the sociocultural fabric due to the exclusion of the elderly. Culture is a continuum that changes over time and space. Therefore, the temporal distance between generations implies a cultural gap. Engaging with complex and multicultural identities coming from different generations allows learners to serve as mediators among generations and cultures. Bringing speakers from different generations together as members of one shared community revitalizes the social fabric while enhancing students’ intercultural and intergenerational competences. This pedagogical project uniquely plugs students into dynamic learning experiences involving elder raconteurs that help present the language through culturally authentic materials such as their testimonies, which serve as a reference for the development of multimodal texts produced with the aid of technology tools. Findings reveal that this intergenerational communication is pivotal to emboldening students to take ownership of their development of cross-cultural skills.
2019 – 2020
Stephanie Birch (African American Studies Librarian, Smathers Libraries) and Dr. Jacob Gordon (Alachua County African American History Task Force)
Digital Collaborations on Black History in Florida Project
In partnership with the Alachua County African American History Task Force, the UF Smathers Libraries held a two-day workshop with Black Studies scholars, heritage professionals, and culture keepers to promote and support Black-centered digital projects in North Central Florida.
Maria Coady (Professor, Education), Susana Cordova Martin (Coral Way Elementary School), Ileana Fuentes (The American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora), Bess de Farber (Smathers Libraries), Dr. Brittany Kester (Education Librarian, Smathes Libraries), Perry Collins (Coppyright and Open Education resrouces librarian, Smathers Libraries)
Revealing a Hidden History: The Coral Way Elementary School Bilingual Experiment (1962 to 1968)
This partnership between the UF College of Education’s Bilingual Education Program, the George A. Smathers Libraries, staff members at Coral Way Elementary School, and The American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora presented two programs to share the story of the first public bilingual school in the country: Coral Way Elementary School in Miami, Florida founded in 1963.
2017 – 2018
Matthew Bratko (Graduate Student, UF Theatre + Dance), Natasha Home (GUTFest), Tyler Francischine (UF Health Communications), and Dominic Henry (GUTFest)
Gainesville Underground Theatre Festival (GUTFest)
The Gainesville Under Ground Theatre Festival was an exploration of identity, history, philosophy, and language via a plethora of live mediums such as dance, theatre, music, installations, film screenings, literary readings, panel discussions and workshops.
Nancy Hunt (Professor, History and African Studies) and Tom Hart (Sequential Artists Workshop)
Graphic Sequential Art in Motion & Stirring Public Dialogues: Orchestrating Encounters between Two Global Comic Artists and their Cities, Gainesville & Kinshasa
This intercultural encounter used the work of internationally recognized Congolese comic artist Papa Mfumu’eto, West African comic artist and painter Didier Viodé, and Congolese novelist Fiston Mwanza as the basis for comic art workshops with Eastside High School history students, the results of which were exhibited at Gainesville’s Sequential Artists Workshop.
2016 – 2017
Katerie Gladdys (Professor, Art and Art History), Anna Prizzia (UF Food Systems Coordinator), and Peggy Macdonald (Matheson History Museum)
The Seed Cabinet
Using the metaphor of the seed as an agent of exchange and expression of community culture and place, the Seed Cabinet – an interactive exhibit combining history, photographs, video, and physical seeds – inspired personal connections to local agriculture through displays and presentations across the north central Florida region.
Val Leitner (Oral History Consultant), Maria Sgambati (UF Seahorse Key Marine Lab), and Michael Allen (Professor, Freshwater, Fisheries and Ecology; Seahorse Key Marine Lab)
Tracing the Tide: Seahorse Key Marine Laboratory Oral History Project
In partnership with the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, oral histories and archival documents associated the Seahorse Key Marine Lab were conducted, preserved, and shared at public open houses at Seahorse Key.
Gabrielle Byam (Hippodrome Theatre), Jeffery Pufahl (Professor, UF Arts and Medicine), and David Ballard (Gainesville Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Affairs Department)
Who Started the Beef?
In partnership with the Hippodrome Theatre and the Gainesville Parks, Recreation, and Culture Department, twenty-five students from underserved areas of Gainesville participated in a two-week theatre intensive (June 25th – August 8th) focused on conflict resolution and based on Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.
Esther Romeyn (UF Center for European Studies) and Richard Macmaster (Interfaith Alliance for Immigrant Justice)
Refugees in Film
Refugees in Film – a four part film series showcased in the Hippodrome Theatre – examined the historical, representational, and political issues swirling around the current European refugee crisis.
Whitney Sanford (Prfoessor, Religion) and Peggy Macdonald (Matheson History Museum)
River of Life, River of Dreams: Springs, Fish Camps, and Old Florida Environmentalism along the St. Johns River
River of Life, River of Dreams – a public exhibit and speaker series hosted by the Matheson History Museum – explored the complex relationships between the St. Johns River and those who depend on it.
2015 – 2016
Randi Gill-Sadler (UF Samuel Proctor Oral History Program) and N’kwanda Jah (Cultural Arts Coalition)
Emancipation Day/Juneteenth Exhibit
This collaboration created a public exhibit at the Cone Park Library to celebrate and inform the Gainesville community about the history and cultural importance of the Juneteenth/Emancipation Day holiday.
Ferdinand Lewis (Professor, Urban and Regional Planning) and Pastor Gerard Duncan (Prayers by Faith Ministries)
Teaching Creative Writing Across Cultures
In partnership with the Gainesville Department of Parks and Recreation, this three-day workshop trained five teachers from the Gainesville and University of Florida communities in cultural competencies for teaching creative writing to teens in marginalized and underserved communities.
2014 – 2015
Amy Vigilante (UF University Galleries) and Russell Etling (City of Gainesville, Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs Department)
The Heart of a Culture: the Santos of Xavier Colón Exhibition
This partnership created a major new exhibition of the centuries-old Hispanic tradition of carving “Santos” of the Virgin Mary by contemporary artist Xavier Colón; .THE HEART OF A CULTURE-The Santos of Xavier Colón Marrero was displayed in the historic Thomas Center gallery Sept. 27, 2014 – Jan. 3, 2015.
David Forest (Gainesville Modern) and Martin Gold (Professor, Architecture)
Gainesville Modern Architectural Film Series
In partnership with the UF School of Architecture, Gainesville Modern produced a film series that both celebrates Gainesville’s cultural legacy of Modernist architecture and reflects how more modernist, sustainable urban design will benefit Gainesville in the future.
Deborah B. Dickey (Playwright and Director), Dr. Rebecca Fitzsimmons (Curator of the Panama Canal Museum Collection, Smathers Libraries)
Race, Class, and Gender in the Panama Canal Zone: An Original Play and Discussion
The University of Florida Smathers Libraries, Alachua County School District, and playwright/director Deborah Dickey collaborated to write and produce an original play that explores the lives of women in the Panama Canal Zone during its construction based on oral histories and archival materials from inhabitants of the Canal Zone.
Paul Ortiz (UF Samuel Proctor Oral History Program) and Bethany Hunter (Yopp! Inc.)
Exploring Local Diversity and African Traditions: A Community Storytelling Series
In partnership with the UF Department of History, Yopp! Inc. and the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program hosted a ten-month storytelling series at the Union Academy/Rosa B. Williams Recreation Center.