Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

Reports from Ph.D. Student and Faculty Residencies in Virtual Summer 2021 Workshops

Please register for the event through the Zoom link: https://ufl.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEqdu2gqj0vHNEUS7Oj46n1WNWy4Ocg83Ic

Dr. Neil Weijer (George A. Smathers Libraries) – “Learning How to Podcast: A Sense of Place”

The text of a book is only a part of the story that it tells. As curator of UF’s Rare Book Collection, Neil Weijer explores how people have transformed their own books to reflect changing needs and aspirations. Even if preserved, most of these stories are hidden from public view, but they can, and should, speak to us all. Neil Weijer intends to use podcasting to bring diverse voices to bear on the collections and empower more people to explore them. It is vital to keep the stories in these books alive and to create new meaning for the future.

Neil Weijer is Curator of the Harold & Mary Jean Hanson Rare Book Collection at the University of Florida. His research and teaching focuses on the history of early books and manuscripts, and he has published on the intersections between legendary history, forgery, and scholarly practice in medieval and early modern England. He worked on the Archaeology of Reading in Early Modern Europe as a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins, and has since been working on two projects that deal with the use of early books in digital spaces. Re-Imagining History (a collaboration with librarians and faculty at Dartmouth College) examines the digital legacy of a large medieval manuscript corpus, and Storied Books at the University of Florida showcases student research and experimentation around the collections in Gainesville.

Daun Fields (Ph.D. Student, English) – Humanities Moments: Creating Community with a Personal Experience Project

Humanities educators teaching virtually can create space for community connections to form not only through discussions, but also through personal experience projects.

Daun Fields studies Victorian mediumship and the 19th century fascination with a gooey, luminous energy flow emanating from the moon, earth, and human bodies. Her research interests include radical pleasure experiences in communal spaces such as ritual performance, music festivals, and queer dancefloors, as well as Victorian science, Indigenous studies, and cultural rhetorics. She thrives in collaborations and is thrilled to be a part of the NHC Summer Residency. She looks forward to learning more about creating community connections in the classroom, cultivating egalitarian and compassionate spaces, and putting digital tools into practice in the upcoming semester.

Luke Rodewald (Ph.D. Student, English) – “Accessible Syllabus, Accessible Course”

Luke Rodewald‘s research and teaching interests consider the intersections of climate change, environmental justice, and pedagogy. Recognizing that the topics he works with are those that may ultimately come to define his students’ lives, he is interested in how personal narrative and thoughtful considerations of local place can be used as starting points for more nuanced discussions of global environmental crises. Through this residency, Luke is excited to consider and collaborate on how to successfully engage students in topics, discussions, and assignments that transcend scholarly analysis and resonate meaningfully with their daily lives.