Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

Workshop leader: Dr. David M. Perry (History Advisor, University of Minnesota and freelance journalist)

How does working with the public fit into academic life in the year 2021? This active learning workshop (bring your ideas!) will engage this timely topic across platforms and professional issues.

Central questions to be addressed include:

• How do we connect formal scholarly writing with publicly-facing work?
• How do you get magazines and newspapers to publish your ideas?
• Can social media help advance your career formally or informally, and what are the risks, obstacles, advantages and opportunities of doing so?
• How do you deal with trolls and how can you teach your academic institutions to help?
• How might you use Twitter, Instagram, Tik-Tok, Facebook, blogging platforms, and op-ed writing to support your professional, scholarly, and pedagogical goals?

Biography:

Dr. David M. Perry is a journalist and historian. He was a professor of History at Dominican University from 2007-2017 and is now the senior academic advisor in the history department at the University of Minnesota. He has had hundreds of essays published in outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, USA Today, The Nation, and many others. He’s co-writing a book with Dr. Matthew Gabriele called The Bright Ages, a new history of the Middle Ages (Harper Collins, Fall 2021).

Limited Registration Information for Graduate Students:

To register for the Going Public! Workshop (limited to twenty graduate students), please fill-out the following registration form by February 19 with your UF email account. A Zoom invitation link to attend the workshop will follow. UF graduate students in the humanities and social sciences will be given priority to attend this workshop.

The 2021 Graduate Public Humanities Institute has been generously cosponsored by the Hyatt and Cici Brown Professor of Florida Archaeology (Kenneth E. Sassaman), the Rothman Family Chair in the Humanities (Jack Davis), the UF Chief Diversity Officer, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the Graduate School.

For questions about the Graduate Public Humanities Institute, please contact Dr. Kristen Galvin, Assistant Director for Graduate Engagement at the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere, kgalvin@ufl.edu.