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Letter from the Director: 2011

2011 Letter from the Director

Center for the Humanities & the Public Sphere
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

University of Florida

With a busy academic year ahead of us, I am delighted to welcome everyone back to campus! The Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere is now happily in its third year in 200 Walker Hall on the main campus of University of Florida. 

As in previous years, the Center has organized a full year of lectures and co-sponsored events, including film series, conferences, performances, and workshops, on campus and in the community with the support of the Rothman Endowment, Yavitz Fund, and Yulee Fund. Sponsoring events allows us to bring scholars from around the globe to the University of Florida and North Central Florida community and support a broad variety of academic and cultural initiatives in the humanities and allied subjects for faculty, students, and the public.

This year we have many events planned, including an eighteen-month-long series entitled “Rehumanizing the University: New Perspectives on the Liberal Arts” and lectures and workshops on subjects as diverse as art and technology, cinema and the classics, the legacy of author Mary Wollstonecraft, African dance in the Diaspora, the power of typography, and the linkages between music, theater, and ritual. The Center is also co-sponsoring for a second year the upcoming Latino Film Festival in Gainesville, organized by the Latina Women’s League, and the eighth annual Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival (FLEXfest), organized by Prof. Roger Beebe in the Department of English. 

Besides the events publicized on our calendar (www.humanities.ufl.edu/calendar), the Center has awarded two grants to enhance access to digital media on campus. One will support the digitization of the full run of Planter’s Punch, a Jamaican journal preserved by the National Library of Jamaica. The second will support new acquisitions for the Film and Media Resources Center in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Moreover, in conjunction with the UF Honors Program, the Center has sponsored two new interdisciplinary undergraduate team-taught courses: “Music and Texts in French Literature” and “Medicine and Philosophy”. With the support of the Rothman Endowment, the Center likewise awarded Summer Humanities Fellowships to five faculty members at UF in support of their research; these grants went to Professors Ingrid Kleepsies, Guolong Lai, Mario Poceski, Mark Thurner, and Mary Watt. More information about their innovative research projects (as well as the dates of their upcoming brown bag presentations at the Center) will be posted soon on our website.

The newest addition to our activities in 2011, with support from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Office of Research, the Center launched grant-writing events in the humanities. Having offered two workshops on grant-writing during the past spring term, along with providing grant support and proposal review services, the Center has also expanded its website detailing UF support for grant-writing and internal and external grant opportunities in the humanities. Our expanded listing features a variety of opportunities for faculty and graduate students, including those concentrated on public and digital work in the humanities. This academic year, in addition to offering general programs on grant-writing in the humanities, the Center will begin organizing several events focused on conducting humanities research at UF in and for a digital age..

So, please stay tuned for the Center’s annual call for proposals for workshops, colloquia, library enhancement grants, summer fellowships, and team-teaching, all supported by the Robert and Margaret Rothman Endowment for the Humanities. We are also very excited to share that, for the first time, we will be able to award several graduate student travel grants in the humanities with funding from the Tedder Family Endowment.  This competition will be announced soon. 

As director, I welcome feedback and suggestions regarding the Center’s current and future endeavors. Please accept my heartfelt thanks for your support.

beffros@ufl.edu

Bonnie Effros
Rothman Chair and Director
Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere
University of Florida

12 August 2011
beffros@ufl.edu