Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

Prof. Vandana Baweja, 2017 Rothman Faculty Summer Fellow (School of Architecture)
Derek Boetcher, 2017-18 Rothman Doctoral Fellow (Dept. of History)
Prof. Jorge Valdés Kroff, 2017 Rothman Faculty Summer Fellow (Depts. of Spanish & Portuguese and Linguistics)
Monday, 6 November – 4:00pm-5:30pm, Keene-Flint 05 (Dept. of History Conference Room)

Global Networks of Tropical Architecture
Prof. Vandana Baweja

Tropical architecture is defined as a climatically adapted alternative of European modernism intended for postwar development in the colonial tropics. In Florida, the idea of the tropical home emerged with Robert Law Weed’s design for the Florida Tropical Home for the Homes of Tomorrow Exhibition at the Century of Progress Fair in Chicago in 1933. Florida tropical architecture was later developed by architects such as—Marion Manley, Wahl Snyder, Igor Polevitzky, Rufus Nims, and Alfred Parker. Dr. Baweja intends to show how Floridian tropical architecture was enmeshed within the larger global tropical architecture movement that developed in the colonial tropics.

Webs of Identity and Memory: New Zealand’s Royal Visit Arches of 1901
Derek Boetcher

In 1901, several temporary commemorative arches were erected to welcome the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York to the colonial cities of New Zealand as part of their global imperial tour. Although the arches contained elements depicting New Zealand’s unique qualities as a settler colony with a developing sense of nationalism, these works also demonstrated its continuing connections to the British Empire and Britain as the “motherland.” This paper argues that the arches, despite their impermanence, can still tell us much about the ways in which the empire and post-imperial settings were envisioned.

Anticipating the Switch: How Bilinguals Integrate Code-Switched Speech
Prof. Jorge Valdés Kroff

Bilinguals in the presence of other known bilinguals frequently switch between languages within the same conversation, a linguistic phenomenon known as code-switching. While the reasons for code-switching are varied and can be impacted by community and individual factors (e.g., its use within a community and proficiency), we know little about its impact for comprehension. Dr. Kroff will outline a new research agenda that aims to uncover what linguistic features may aid bilinguals in anticipating an upcoming code-switch between languages. He will present results from a preliminary study that uses naturalistic stimuli derived from a bilingual spoken language corpus from Miami, FL.

This event is part of the 2017-18 UF Synergies: Current Scholarship in the Humanities series, which features informal talks by the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere’s Rothman Faculty Summer Fellows, Tedder Doctoral Fellows, and Rothman Doctoral Fellows. Fellows will each speak for 20 minutes about their funded work, leaving ample time for questions and discussion amongst the projects.

This event is free and open to the public.
Click for more information on becoming a Rothman Faculty Summer Fellow, a Tedder Family Doctoral Fellow.
For more information on this event, contact humanities-center@ufl.edu.
For more information on this series, visit the Synergies webpage