Center for Humanities and the Public Sphere - Annual Newsletter 2022-2023

THE ANNUAL NEWSLET TER

A YEAR IN REVIEW 2022-2023

“ Live the questions now. Perhaps then, one distant day, you will gradually, without noticing it, emerge in the answer.” — RAINER MARIA RILKE

Table of Contents What Can the Humanities Teach Us About Good Mentorship?................................................................................ 15

Our Mission................................................................................... 2 Staff and Advisory Boards........................................................... 3

Institute for Learning in Retirement at Oak Hammock...........16 Outgoing and Incoming Directors’ Letters................................ 4 A Conversation with The Conversation.................................... 17 Rothman and Tedder Doctoral Fellows Spotlight...................... 6 Everything You Wanted to Know About Grants but Were Afraid to Ask..............................................................18

Fellowship Announcements.........................................................7

Publication Subventions............................................................ 19

Rethinking the Public Sphere, 2022-23: Public Humanities........................................................................ 8

Speakers and Workshop Grants and Library Enhancement Grants............................................. 20

Coasts, Climates, the Humanities, and the Environment Consortium.............................................. 9

Strength in Numbers...................................................................21 Programs in Public Humanities Grants.................................... 10 Speaker Series 2023-24: Scales of Belonging......................... 22 Humanities Engagement Scholars............................................11 On the Horizon........................................................................... 23 Humanities Writing Retreat.......................................................12 Thank You................................................................................... 24 Graduate Humanities Summer Institute...................................13 Public Humanities Internship Program.................................... 14

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123 Our Mission THREE INTERRELATED PURPOSES Facilitate and promote the research programs of humanities scholars at the University of Florida

Offer a place for outreach to the community in which we live and teach

Provide an intellectual space and a physical location within the University and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences for critical and collaborative discussions of the humanities that reach across and beyond individual disciplines

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STAFF

ADVISORY BOARD

Barbara Mennel Director and Rothman Chair (2017-2023) Professor of Film Studies and German Studies

Jaime Ahlberg, Philosophy

Anirban Gupta-Nigam Associate Director (2022-2023)

Kaira Cabañas, Art + Art History (Fall 2022)

Seth Bernstein, History

Ashley Jones, Art + Art History (Spring 2023- )

Sara Agnelli Assistant Director for Graduate Engagement

Jillian Hernandez, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Roger Maioli dos Santos, English

Lauren Burrell Cox Humanities Program Manager (2022-2023)

Ali Mian, Religion

Rhonda Black Office Manager

Chris Smith, Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Velvet Yates, Classics

Tyler Klatt Program Coordinator, Ph.D. Student, English (2022-2023)

Carol Richardson, A. Quinn Jones Museum & Cultural Center Cristovão Nwachukwu, English

Noah Mullens Humanities Program Manager, Ph.D. Student, English

GRADUATE ADVISORY BOARD Talline R. Martines, Director of Graduate Professional Development

NEWSLETTER CONTRIBUTORS Barbara Mennel, Anirban Gupta-Nigam, Sara Agnelli, Tyler Klatt, Noah Mullens

Plato L. Smith II, Data Management and Associate University Librarian Jodi Schorb, English

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From the Director’s Desk

At the end of my term as Rothman Chair and Director of the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere (CHPS), I reflect on the past six years. Responding to the needs of diverse scholarship, we expanded the range of our internal grants. The humanities center also extended its reach among undergraduate students with the Humanities Engagement Scholars program and the Intersections program funded by the Mellon Foundation. Extensive programming and individual mentoring for graduate students culminated in the Humanities Graduate Summer Institute and public humanities summer internships. The highly successful annual Writing Retreat provided faculty members with time to focus while enjoying a community of scholars. “Rethinking the Public Sphere” defined the annual speaker series to explore questions of democracy, data, and public humanities.

During my term, the humanities center deepened its connections to regional and national organizations, such as the National Humanities Center and the National Humanities Alliance. Delegations from UF advocated for the humanities on the Hill on Humanities Advocacy Days. Collaborating with other humanities centers led to fruitful outcomes. For example, the Willson Center for Arts and Humanities at the University of Georgia led a multi-institutional Mellon Consortium grant focusing on environmental humanities in the Southeast of the U.S. that included UF scholars.

Over the years, I especially cherished learning about scholarship at UF. Leading the discussion of over 90 research presentations by the Rothman Faculty Fellows, the Rothman and Tedder Family Doctoral Fellows, and other CHPS awardees taught me about the cutting-edge research that UF doctoral students and faculty undertake. Facilitating scholarly conversations regularly invigorated my sense of the important contributions of humanities scholarship to UF’s knowledge production.

I have also valued the deep and meaningful engagement with community members who work tirelessly to enrich life in North Central Florida.

Events co-organized with community organizations were always special. For example, an elaborate celebration of poetry at the A. Quinn Jones Museum & Cultural Center and a workshop about African American heritage at the Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center pointed toward possibilities of invigorating future collaborations between the university and its surrounding community.

Over the years, faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and staff members contributed tirelessly to the work at the Center, bringing their talents and leaving their mark. The committed members of the advisory board were always ready to discuss proposals and concerns of the profession, from academic publishing to creating sustainable frameworks for humanities scholarship.

I am grateful to all those who have supported the humanities center during my term. I am delighted to welcome Jaime Ahlberg to the helm and am confident that we will look forward to many more active years of engagement with the humanities!

Barbara Mennel Outgoing Rothman Chair and Director | Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE

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OUTGOING AND INCOMING

I am privileged and delighted to step into the role of Rothman Chair and Director of the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere (CHPS) and to continue our commitment to humanities programming for scholars, students, and the North Central Florida community.

I know I am not alone in appreciating the period of growth that Professor Barbara Mennel oversaw during her six-year term as Director. I thank her for her positive spirit and tireless devotion to the Center’s mission, programs, and constituents. As I take the Center into a new chapter, I am motivated by three interconnected goals: encouraging humanities research, investing in undergraduate and graduate students, and supporting publicly-engaged programming.

Scholarly research in the humanities is the backbone of CHPS’s work. The creativity, productivity, and care of faculty are key to shaping humanistic questions and bringing projects to life for students and the public. Connecting faculty to grants and fellowships, creating spaces of crossdisciplinary interaction, and serving as a hub for intellectual engagement, are central to our mission.

Students also continue to be an important constituent. I am excited to be at the beginning of a new initiative to support undergraduate research in the humanities. Next year we aim to introduce programs that immerse students in the experience of knowledge production through research. This year we will continue to invest in programming for humanities graduate students, supporting their research, connecting them with other areas of campus, and raising awareness of the value and versatility of their humanities MAs and Ph.D.s.

One of my main priorities for CHPS is creating an infrastructure of engagement between the university and the community. Identifying debates that should be had but are not yet happening, informing debates, and delivering performances and lectures help to demystify what happens in campus offices and classrooms. When outreach is done well, it makes vivid what our work can contribute to society more broadly.

And yet, there is more to community engagement than outreach. My aspiration is to foster genuine exchanges and enduring relationships between the university and our community partners. I look forward to the opportunity to amplify voices in the community, shed light on local histories and places of significance, and connect our shared histories to the world we inhabit today.

Part of what makes CHPS so special is that it serves people with different but overlapping interests, goals, knowledge, and skills. Moving into the role of Rothman Chair and Director, I most look forward to opening conversations that strengthen awareness of the value of humanistic questions and methods to these varied groups, and to society more generally. I hope to see you at some of our events!

Jaime Ahlberg Rothman Chair and Director | Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere 5

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Rothman and Tedder Doctoral Fellows Spotlight The Rothman and Tedder Doctoral Fellowships provide funding for doctoral students to conduct research related to their dissertation.

Many of the Fellows traveled to study their research objects on location. When Abigail Lindo, a Ph.D. student in Music and Macarena Deij Prado, a Ph.D. student in Art History, presented jointly on their research to the UF community, audiences experienced how art and music, the past and the present speak to each other across geographic distances and historic periods.

Abigail Lindo (Music), Rothman Doctoral Fellow “Sensing Azorean Autonomous Identity” Abigail Lindo is completing an ethnographic research project on contemporary musical culture driven by music festivals on São Miguel, the largest of nine islands in the Portuguese autonomous region of the Azores.

While Abigail Lindo spent the academic year as a Fulbright U.S. Student Fellow in São Miguel, the fellowship funds enabled her to travel to Lisbon, Portugal. There she visited relevant repositories of cultural resources, including one museum and two libraries, where she accessed a wealth of resources, taking pictures and scanning book pages. The Rothman Doctoral Fellowship also made it possible for her to establish contact with potential future research collaborators.

Macarena Deij Prado (Art History), Rothman Doctoral Fellow “Public Performance and Display in Spanish America 1570-1630” Macarena Deij Prado studies the 1587 procession of a painting of the Virgin Mary in Colombia. The image traveled hundreds of kilometers between Chiquinquirá and Santafé de Bogotá.

The Rothman Doctoral Fellowship enabled Macarena Deij Prado to undertake a two-week research trip to Colombia, where she visited archives and museums for her dissertation chapter on the 1587 procession of the painting of the Virgin of Chiquinquirá from the town of the same name to the much-larger city of Tunja. In the archives, she found important maps and other primary source materials for the chapter. In the museums, she viewed paintings of the Virgin. She also visited Villa de Leyva, an important site of the 1580 procession, and the Church of Chiquinquirá, which holds the painting of the Virgin of Chiquinquirá.

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FELLOWSHIP ANNOUNCEMENTS 2023 ROTHMAN FACULTY SUMMER FELLOWS

2023-24 ROTHMAN DOCTORAL FELLOWS

Alyssa Cole, African American Studies Movement Before the Movement: Black Women’s Defense of Medical Facilities in Kansas City

Monsunmola Adeojo, English Hidden in Layered Robes: Indigenous Politics in the Religious Framework of Reverend Canon J.J. Ransome-Kuti

Juliana Restrepo Sanin, Political Science Violence Against Women in Politics in Latin America

Helena Chen, Art History From Paper to Bronze and Back Again: The Forging of Ancient Chinese Bronzes from the Mid-19th to the Early-20th Century

2023-24 TEDDER FAMILY DOCTORAL FELLOWS Jeffrey Jones, History “Ancient Obligations”: Imperial Subjecthood and Sovereignty in British Honduras and the Caribbean Basin, 1763—1862

Tyler Cline, History To Slake the Thirst of Liberty: Migration, Race, and the Transformation of Transnational Anglo-Saxonism, 1830-1890 Neha Kohli, Geography The Matter of Islands: Examining Island Narratives and Political Life in the Eastern Indian Ocean

Aja Cacan, Anthropology Sensing the Limits: Moving Matter and the Social Terrain of Sea Level Rise in Miami

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Iblin Edelweiss Murillo Lafuente, Sociology Anti-ableist Feminist Resistance: How Women with Disabilities in the Global South Resist Violence through Feminist Social Movements Jeana Melilli, Music Unfootnoting Women: Expanding the Historical Narrative of the 18th Century Trio and Accompanied Sonatas Joshua Perlin, Psychology Whose Narrative? Which Christianity?: Investigating the Impact of Religious Socioecology on the Narrative Identities of High and Low Church Anglicans Yuanxin Wang, Political Science Imperial Visions of the Family: Familial Imaginaries and Imperial Encounters between China and Britain, 1840-1912

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SPEAKER SERIES: Rethinking The Public Sphere, 2022-23: Public Humanities During the academic year 2022-23, the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere concluded its multi-year series, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” offering three examples of public engagement in the humanities. From methods for preserving African American heritage to podcasting about philosophy and environmental humanities, the speakers covered a range of concerns that move engagement beyond academic disciplines.

Brent Leggs (Executive Director, African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund and University of Pennsylvania) provided an overview of the achievements and philosophy of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, launched by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Faculty members and students from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the College of the Arts, and the College of Design, Construction and Planning attended the lecture at UF, as well as members of the Gainesville community, the Harn Museum, and the Florida Office of Cultural & Historical Preservation. The Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere collaborated with Vivian Filer and Deloris Rentz from the Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center in Gainesville in offering Brent Leggs a tour of African American buildings and neighborhoods in Gainesville and beyond, from the one-room schoolhouse to the Claronelle Griffin House and Old Mount Carmel Baptist Church. The Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center hosted an evening with Leggs, in which community leaders engaged in a conversation about strategies of historic preservation.

In January 2023, the Old Mount Carmel Baptist Church became one of 35 historic Black churches in the nation to receive a CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE

grant from the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. Led by Pastor Gerard Duncan, the Pleasant Street Historic District church was recognized for its contributions to the American landscape as a site of African American achievement and resilience.

Barry Lam (University of California, Riverside, Department of Philosophy) gave a public lecture on philosophical issues arising from the day-to-day administration of criminal justice. To conduct his research, he embedded himself with police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges. His presentation resonated with students interested in law and ethics. In addition, Lam, host of the successful podcast Hi-Phi Nation, facilitated a workshop on academic podcasting for students, faculty, and staff of UF Communications.

Nicholas Allen (University of Georgia, Department of English and Willson Center for Humanities and Art) discussed the productive relationship between environmental and public humanities. Author of Ireland, Literature, and the Coast: Seatangled, Allen began his lecture with his own biography of growing up in a 8

divided Belfast, to question the emphasis of Irish literary studies on urban environments.

Instead, he focuses on the cultural production that reflects the coasts of Ireland.

Allen also leads the Coasts, Climates, the Humanities, and the Environment Consortium, funded by the Mellon Foundation.

The annual speaker series was cosponsored by the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere (Rothman Endowment); College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; UF Research; African American Studies Program; Bob Graham Center for Public Service; Center for Arts, Migration, and Entrepreneurship; Department for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies; Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center; Department of Biology; Department of Classics; Department of History; Department of Political Science; Department of Urban and Regional Planning; George A. Smathers Library; Levin College of Law; and the One Health Center of Excellence.

Coasts, Climates, the Humanities, and the Environment Consortium

Coasts, Climates, the Humanities, and the Environment is a consortium created by a $150,000 Mellon grant in 2019, comprising of researchers from the Universities of Georgia, North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Louisiana State, and Florida. Blending archival research and public engagement, the consortium has sought to bring humanistic insights to bear on environmental challenges—particularly related to the diverse, complex ecologies and cultures of coastal zones.

In January 2023, members of the consortium visited UF for an overnight public humanities research excursion to the Gulf of Mexico, organized around visits to IFAS aquaculture, biological, and marine science research stations located in Cedar and Seahorse Key. Talks by aquaculturist Leslie Sturmer, Mike Allen (Director of the Nature Coast Biological Station), and environmental historian Jack Davis prepared the group for a day-and-a-half of immersive engagement with cross-hatched histories of colonialism, environmental

change, and communal worldmaking in the region. Archaeologist Kenneth Sassaman and environmental writer Cynthia Barnett led the group in walking tours through sites in the Cedar Keys National Wildlife Refuge, especially Atsena Otie Key—a formerly developed island abandoned after the hurricane of 1896, which is also the subject of a digital humanities project produced by the UF contingent of the consortium.

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At Seahorse Key/Cedar Key Light Station are, front row from left, Ken Sassaman, Barbara Mennel, Traci Birch, and Pete Brosius; back from left, Nicholas Allen, Sara Agnelli, Anna Hamilton, Ashley Melzer, Ben Ehlers, Cynthia Barnett, and Anirban Gupta-Nigam.

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Programs in Public Humanities Grants The Center’s Public Humanities grants continued to support collaborative, community-oriented engagements on historical memory, activism, and representation.

“Heirs’ Property and Intergenerational Wealth” was a public discussion and documentation series created by UF Anthropology Ph.D. candidate Belay Alem, and Carol Richardson of the A. Quinn Jones Museum & Cultural Center to initiate conversations with Gainesville’s African American community on cultural, legal, and personal aspects of heirs’ properties. The events were a forum to learn about the emotions, memories, and histories of attachment people have to their built environment.

Joashilia Jeanmarie, an undergraduate student majoring in sociology and African American studies, partnered with Natalia Naranjo (Alliance for Fair Food) for a project “Promoting Haitian Creole Language Accessibility in Immokalee, Florida.” They organized a workshop that sought to improve a situation where, despite the wide use of Haitian Creole in Immokalee, welfare programs, activist engagement, and scholarship suffer from a lack of resources to make the language accessible.

Materials shared with participants in the Haitian Creole Language Access Project.

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“The workshop began with a ‘Know your Rights’ training, during which participants were informed of their federally protected language access rights and given tools for self-advocacy.

Community members were also given the opportunity to share their personal experiences with language disparity … In this, the workshop acted as a space for collective care as community members shared their grievances and offered support to one another.”

— Joashilia Jeanmarie

Humanities Engagement Scholars The Humanities Engagement Scholars (HES) program enables undergraduate students from all majors to enroll in humanities courses, cultivating a deeper understanding of the human experience. The program equips undergraduate students with essential skills for success within and beyond the university setting. Its vision is to enhance students’ professional capabilities while also helping them envision a brighter future.

This year, during a spooky Halloween party, advisors, coordinators, and directors shared resources on opportunities for research, internships, and study abroad. A series entitled “Everything You Wanted to Know About ‘X’ but Were Afraid to Ask” explored how the humanities provide students with a range of hard and soft skills.

Two events addressed how these skills support careers outside academia. In the fall, HES students attended a panel of UF alumni whose degrees in the humanities paved the way for careers in medicine, communications, and art curation. In spring, collaborating with the Sankofa African American Studies Society, the program spotlighted

the role of diversity in careers such as healthcare, local government, and law.

Students in the program volunteer for humanities events. Some assisted with preparing lectures and workshops held at CHPS as well as outside the university.

One student served their community by beautifying Glen Spring Elementary School with a group of peers. The work of the undergraduate students enriched the 20222023 cycle of humanities programing. At the end of spring semester, the Center celebrated the achievements of five graduating HES students: Sam Boyal, Ava Diercksen, Isabella Kemp, Brian Marra, and Leah Rogers.

Courtney Shannon, attorney, speaks during a Humanities at Work event.

Students engage with speakers at the Humanities at Work event.

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Humanities Writing Retreat From May 8 to 12, a group of 35 scholars, consisting of faculty and doctoral students, convened at UF’s tranquil Austin Cary Forest Campus for a week-long intense writing retreat. This change in environment, away from the usual campus and home settings, enabled focus and reorientation toward scholarly writing after a busy year. Among the attendees were both regulars who have attended the Retreat since its inception and newcomers who joined UF during the pandemic. Projects undertaken during the retreat encompassed co-authored books, book proposals, articles, dissertation and book chapters, funding proposals, and book reviews. Notably, past participants have successfully completed published book chapters, books, book proposals, funding proposals, and conference papers. The retreat offered the writers the opportunity to reconnect and rebuild relationships with colleagues from various units after a prolonged period of isolation caused by the pandemic.

This occasion marked the first time that the Writing Retreat and the Humanities Graduate Summer Institute were held in the same place. Both events brought together about 50 doctoral students and faculty members for a week of collaboration, fostering informal mentoring sessions. A visit by Maria LaMonaca Wisdom (Duke University), who delivered a public lecture on mentoring and offered coaching sessions for graduate students and junior faculty, solidified the positive outcomes of the week.

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Graduate Humanities Summer Institute The Center launched its first in-person Graduate Humanities Summer Institute for Ph.D. and Master’s students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences at the University of Florida. In the tranquil setting of the Austin Cary Forest Campus, a diverse cohort of graduate students from different departments across campus participated in intense workshops, writing sessions, and small-group discussions.

During the morning sessions, experts led a series of collaborative professional development workshops aimed at enhancing graduate student training and experience outside the students’ current research and teaching activities. In the afternoon, participants explored different ways to expand their research in global, interdisciplinary, and collaborative frameworks.

“The Graduate Institute was a wonderful experience for both me and my colleagues.

I walked away from the experience having developed new professional skills in the humanities. The speakers introduced us to a variety of topics ranging from grant writing to public facing projects.

One of the best parts of the experience, though, were the connections that we made among each other.”

— Noah Mullens, English

Engaging the theme of “Expanding Horizons through the Humanities,” the Institute was designed to foster both academic and professional versatility. The Institute expanded participants’ humanistic toolkits and research outputs, translating their scholarly expertise and research skills for diverse professional contexts, within and beyond academia.

Above, Humanities graduate students participating in the Institute. Below, from left, Zac Young, Department of History; Belay W. Alem, Department of Anthropology; Cloe Zeidan, Department of Linguistics; and Natalia Dambe, Department of Geography.

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Public Humanities Internship Program In the summer of 2023, CHPS organized the third cycle of its Public Humanities Internship Program for Ph.D. Students in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Working closely with a site mentor on a specific project, Ph.D. students expanded their professional skills and networked while gaining meaningful humanistic work experiences beyond an academic setting.

Four interns connected their academic research and skills to host organizations in mutually beneficial relationships. The program was co-sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Margaret and Robert Rothman Endowment, and the University Press of Florida.

Danillo Ramon Ramos Nisio (Political Science) created content at TeachRock, Rock and Roll Forever Foundation. Felipe González-Silva (English) was a curriculum developer and program assistant for the Hippodrome Theatre. James Gillespie (Philosophy) worked as an outreach assistant at the University Press of Florida. Kevin Artiga (English) developed augmented reality engagement programs for the A. Quinn Jones Museum & Cultural Center. The four interns gained valuable professional experience and contributed to local public humanities projects.

“This internship experience has been solidifying my ‘undercommons’ impulse for finding and fostering spaces where intellectual and communal growth happens outside academia. I find it crucial to remind myself about the valuable spaces that thrive outside the rigid confines of the university system. The program at The Hippodrome brings about these often-abstract ideals. It realizes the expressive and transformative value of art. It merges it inextricably with values and endeavors such as restorative justice and practices, equity, and liberation.”

— Felipe González-Silva

Public Humanities interns, clockwise from upper left, Kevin Artiga, Danillo Ramon Ramos Nisio, Felipe Gonzalez-Silva, and James “Jim” Gillespie.

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What Can the Humanities Teach Us about Good Mentorship?

Maria LaMonaca Wisdom, director of faculty mentoring and coaching programs at Duke University, writes on issues of coaching, mentorship, graduate education, and faculty development for venues like The Chronicle of Higher Education. She is currently completing a book, How to Mentor a PhD (Princeton University Press). Wisdom gave a keynote lecture titled “What Can the Humanities Teach Us about Good Mentorship?” as part of the Graduate Humanities Summer Institute and the annual CHPS Writing Retreat.

Drawing on material from her forthcoming book, Wisdom discussed how humanistic inquiry might help us think about effective practices of mentorship for both graduate students and junior faculty in the 21st century university. She also gave two coaching workshops titled “Taking Stock, Moving Forward” for graduate students and junior humanities faculty.

“I appreciated Dr. Wisdom’s invitation to rethink how to mentor Ph.D. students. I wonder how institutions can support mentors as they engage in the more involved mentorship practices that Dr. Wisdom described. Being fully present with mentees, helping them to learn how to solve their own problems, guiding them as they construct their professional lives alongside their personal lives—this is timeconsuming, if also very rewarding, work. It is also not obvious how to do it well. What kinds of resources and supports can institutions offer to support and encourage better mentorship practices? What kind of community can humanities faculty build around the shared challenge of ushering grad students into their professional lives after the Ph.D.?”

“Maria Wisdom’s talk put forth mentoring as situated, broadly conceived, and activated in myriad ways. Through the research and experiences Dr. Wisdom shared, we see mentoring as critical to a thriving scholarly community and not merely a task to be completed. In acknowledging the complexity of academia, we also recognize a mentoring ecosystem as dynamic, active, and engaging many contributors throughout a career trajectory.

Prioritizing transparency, open communication, using our strengths, and modeling essential skills are well within our grasp. A lively discussion and provocative workshops followed Dr. Wisdom’s talk.”

— María Rogal, School of Art + Art History

— Jaime Ahlberg, Philosophy

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Institute for Learning in Retirement at Oak Hammock Since 2021, the Center has offered an annual summer course for the Institute for Learning in Retirement at Oak Hammock. Inspired by current public debates, the course brings together scholars from different humanities disciplines. Together, the presentations demonstrate how depth of knowledge can enlighten conversations. In summer 2021, presenters addressed “Legacies of Violence,” which analyzed the aftereffects of violence in national contexts, including the history of violence against Native Americans and the legacy of American police brutality. The class included a discussion of tyranny in classical Athens, and concluded by reflecting on changing views on the Bolshevik Revolution.

In summer 2022, the humanities course addressed questions of “Knowing and Believing.” Humanities faculty members discussed linguistic perspectives of lying, the story of the Garden of Eden as knowledge distinguishing humans from animals, a philosophical approach to the distinction between science and pseudoscience, a survey of the ways everyday uses of data and algorithms can both help and harm, a literary studies perspective on 19th-century cholera epidemics, and an account of how Enlightenment thinkers grappled with the challenge of philosophical skepticism.

“War and the Humanities” guided the presentations in summer 2023, situating war in relation to photography, children’s literature, museum, monuments, film, and women. Over the years, faculty members from Anthropology, Classics, History, English, Religion, Jewish Studies, Philosophy, Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Political Science, and Women’s Studies have shared their scholarship with the participants in the Institute for Learning in Retirement.

“In the summer of 2022, the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere organized for the Institute for Learning in Retirement an interdisciplinary course entitled ‘Knowing and Believing.’ Six professors addressed issues such as lying, good and evil in the Genesis, pseudoscience, data and algorithms, knowledge of pandemics, and skepticism in the Enlightenment. ILR participants, some of whom were experts in specific academic fields, appreciated the interdisciplinary nature of the course and were inspired to look at the world in new ways. ‘Knowing and Believing’ was one of ILR’s most popular courses, based on the large number of participants and the high attendance at each session.”

—Rick Gold, Chair, ILR Curriculum Committee

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Residents of Oak Hammock at the University of Florida, above left, examine children’s books discussed during a lecture in July 2023 on “Children’s Literature and War” by Anastasia Ulanowicz, above right, associate professor of English. Photos by Michel Thomas.

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A Conversation with The Conversation The Conversation is a unique non-profit news service that helps scholars shape their expert knowledge for broad publics. UF is a founding member of the organization, and over 400 articles written by its faculty and Ph.D. students have garnered close to 23 million reads as a result of the platform’s global syndication model.

Led by Martin LaMonica, director of editorial projects and newsletters with The Conversation, this workshop—organized in collaboration with UF Research—was geared toward giving potential contributors insights into identifying timely topics, crafting compelling pitches, and writing effectively for non-expert audiences.

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Everything You Wanted to Know About Grants but Were Afraid to Ask This comprehensive workshop led by Bill HartDavidson (Michigan State University) offered a unique, humanistic perspective on grants development and administration. An interactive event spanning four sessions, it guided over 40 participants through the entire lifecycle of a grant project, emphasizing all the elements a successful proposal needs other than a good idea. Whittling away at silos between programming and administration, the event foregrounded the necessity of collaboration,

teamwork, and shared expertise as the cornerstone of a sustainable, fundable project. Although rooted in a humanistic ethos, the workshop’s multidisciplinary address was evidenced by the engaged enthusiasm of attendees spanning community members, students, and administrators and faculty from the Colleges of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Medicine, Education, and Engineering, among others.

When is the right time to go after grant funding?

What kinds of projects need grant support and what kind of projects get funded?

VALUES, ACTIVITIES, & OUTCOMES OF INTELLECTUAL LEADERSHIP

How can I build a track record of success with a team that will make funders confident in our ability to be good stewards of resources?

How can I attract sustained support for my work without selling out my goals and values?

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Publication Subventions The Center continued to support humanities book publications with its publication subvention award, in collaboration with the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the College of the Arts.

The subvention program is instrumental in supporting quality book publications at affordable prices for humanities scholars at UF.

BOOK SPOTLIGHT Benjamin Hebblethwaite, Professor, Languages, Literatures and Cultures Professor Benjamin Hebblethwaite and Professor Silke Jansen’s edited volume, Indigenous and African Diaspora Religions in the Americas (University of Nebraska Press), collects ten chapters that explore Indigenous and African Diasporic spirit-based religious traditions in Canada, the United States, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, and Nigeria. The book profiles the investigated religions using interdisciplinary research methods and includes several maps by UF’s geospatial consultant, Joe Aufmuth.

Stephen Perz, Professor, Sociology and Criminology & Law With the support of the publication subvention, Professor Stephen G. Perz co-authored The Road to the Land of the Mother of God: A History of the Interoceanic Highway in Peru (University of Nebraska Press) with Jorge Luis Castillo Hurdado. This work discusses the Peruvian region of Madre de Dios, the land of the Mother of God, which for centuries was among the most remote parts of South America. Access to Madre de Dios was a priority for the Incan empire, Spanish conquerors, missionaries, scientists, rubber barons, and colonists, all of whom encountered unexpected perils in finding the way, many paying with their lives. At the dawn of the 21st century, unprecedented circumstances aligned to finally impel construction of an Interoceanic Highway across Madre de Dios. Despite political demand, the highway was not justifiable economically or ecologically, resulting in extraordinary exemptions from oversight. The road thus yielded problematic outcomes and stimulated debate over infrastructure governance. Revelations that systemic corruption was behind its approval made the Interoceanic Highway an emblematic case of the contradictions of infrastructure.

Seth Bernstein, Professor, History The publication subvention also supported the publication of Professor Seth Bernstein’s monograph, Return to the Motherland: Soviet Displaced Persons in World War II and the Cold War (Cornell University Press).

The book covers the situation of the end of World War II, when more than five million people returned to the Soviet Union from wartime displacement. Most had been forced laborers and prisoners of war, deported to the Third Reich to work in a crushing environment, and they returned to accusations of treason in the USSR. Using declassified Soviet police archives, the book explores their brutal but transnational experience from 1941 into the 1950s. Their story is a window onto the paradoxes of freedom and violence during war, Soviet conceptions of belonging, and debates over migration as a human right in the Cold War. 19

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Library Enhancement Grant Program in the Humanities In the 2022-23 academic year, the Center’s grants supported the enhancement of library collections in four areas critical to contemporary humanities research in general, and at UF in particular: Asian Studies, environmental humanities, children’s literature, and artificial intelligence.

James Gerien-Chen (History) received an award, “Strengthening Library Holdings in Asian Studies,” to acquire innovative secondary scholarship in Asian Studies cutting across temporal, disciplinary, and regional/national divides.

Hina Shaikh (Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies) received a grant toward “Developing a Diverse, Inclusive, and Ethical Artificial Intelligence Library Collection in the Humanities.”

Terry Harpold (English) was funded to build library collections on climate change through acquisitions in “Environmental Humanities and Climate Catastrophe: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Crisis in the 21st Century.”

Jinxui ‘Serena’ Liu’s (Education) award, “Bilingual Children’s Books: Bridging Cultural Gaps with Literature” facilitated procuring books in an area that still comprises only around 1% of the children’s literature holdings in the Education Library.

S P O T L I G H T | Developing a Diverse, Inclusive, and Ethical Artificial Intelligence Library Collection in the Humanities Recent AI faculty hires and the creation of new curricula outside of the traditional STEM fields of study translate to a critical need for AI-related library materials in the areas of humanities to support this initiative. In the process of developing a diverse and inclusive collection, it is vital to recognize the existing gender gap and implicit biases in the field of AI and counter this by including sources specifically addressing ethics and fairness, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and other underrepresented groups, as well as privacy concerns.

SPEAKER SERIES AND WORKSHOPS IN THE HUMANITIES The Center continued to support speaker series and workshops in the humanities throughout a year when public programs gradually became a part of our cultural lives again after the past few years of pandemic restrictions. Including conferences, workshops, and exhibitions, funded projects ranged from analysis of cultural ideals of beauty and methods to recover Classical sculptural techniques to considerations of the latest research on bilingualism and social diversity.

S P O T L I G H T | Deborah Willis: Posing Beauty in African American Culture This event was part of “Posing Beauty in African American Culture,” an exhibition exploring artistic and popular cultural representations of Blackness and beauty in a historical frame. On March 30, 2023, the Harn Museum of Art hosted a conversation between MacArthur Fellow, artist, curator, professor and eminent scholar in the history of Black photography Deborah Willis (New York University), and Jade Powers, the Harn Museum’s new curator of contemporary art. Drawing on themes presented in “Posing Beauty in African American Culture,” Willis and Powers’ wide-ranging discussion traversed ideas of beauty, joy, and self-fashioned Black identity in photography, video, fashion, and advertising dating from the 1890s to the present.

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STRENGTH in NUMBERS

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AWARDS FOR FACULTY AND GRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCH

200 35

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GRADUATE STUDENTS REACHED THROUGH MENTORING AND PROGRAMMING

PARTICIPANTS AT THE ANNUAL CHPS WRITING RETREAT

5

GRANTS FOR CAPACITY BUILDING AND PUBLIC HUMANITIES COLLABORATIONS

3,000

PEOPLE REACHED THROUGH ORGANIZED, CO-SPONSORED, AND SUPPORTED EVENTS

HUMANITIES ENGAGEMENT SCHOLARS PROGRAM GRADUATES

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Speaker Series 2023-24: Scales of Belonging The Center’s 2023-24 Speaker Series invites scholars to take diverse approaches to answer the question: How and where do we belong?

Exiles and refugees may never belong where they make homes.

Migrants may never feel at home where they belong. While some choices we make, others are made for us. People move—as much as they are moved by forces of nature and politics. In another key, we are moved by things that affect us: literature, film, the lives of others.

If shared worlds make life meaningful on a fragile planet, how do we connect across diverse communities in different scales of belonging?

CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE

These concerns guide the Center’s 2023-24 Speaker Series on the theme, “Scales of Belonging.” The inaugural lecture in the series was delivered by Dipesh Chakrabarty (University of Chicago) on Sept. 21, with talks and workshops by Leonard N. Moore (University of Texas at Austin) and Emma Shaw Crane (Columbia University), among others, to follow.

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Artificial Intelligence in Africa Marit Ostebo, Anthropology and African Studies Censorship and Knowledge in the Early Modern World Neil Weijer (Smathers Libraries) and Anton Matytsin (History) José Bedia and Contemporary Cuban Art as a Nexus of Religion, Art, and Identity Dulce Román (Harn Museum) and Eric J. Segal (Harn Museum) Philosophy, Race, and Justice Arina Pismenny (Philosophy), Jennifer Rothschild (Philosophy), and Amber Ross (Philosophy) Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom and the Future of Digital Pedagogy Rae Yan (English), Malini Schueller (English), Jessica HarlandJacobs (History), Apollo Amoko (English), Leah Rosenberg (English), Raúl Sánchez (English), Victor Del Hierro (English), Laura Gonzales (English), Sandra Chang (History), Julia Mollenthiel (African American Studies), Hélène Huet (Smathers Libraries)

KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE HUMANITIES CENTER CALENDAR FOR THE FOLLOWING SPONSORED EVENTS TO BE HELD DURING THE 2023-24 ACADEMIC YEAR:

Visual Narratives in Himalayan Art Lecture by Elena Pakhoutova, Tongyun Yin (Harn Museum) and Eric Segal (Harn Museum) Visualizing & Sensing Spaces: A Workshop Series Rebecca Hanson (Sociology) and Unna Yared (Sociology)

For an up-to-date list of events and event details, please visit: HUMANITIES.UFL.EDU/EVENTS

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Thank You For Supporting Our Work THE CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE THANKS ITS FRIENDS AND DONORS FOR THEIR GENEROUS GIFTS THAT SUPPORT OUR WORK ON A DAILY BASIS: Margaret and Robert Rothman

David Yulee

Susan and Warren Tedder

Jerome A. Yavitz

The Hon. J.D. Smith Jr. and Mrs. Flo C. Smith

Dr. Jeanne Street and Mr. Cliff Dopson

IN THE 2022-23 ACADEMIC YEAR, PRIVATE SUPPORT ENABLED US TO OFFER NINE DIFFERENT INTERNAL GRANT COMPETITIONS AND GIVE 31 INDIVIDUAL AWARDS TO FACULTY, STUDENTS, AND MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC. The Rothman Faculty Summer Fellowship

Library Enhancement Program in the Humanities

The Tedder Family Doctoral Fellowship

Support for Workshops and Speaker Series in the Humanities

CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE

Programs in the Public Humanities Summer Residency for Ph.D. Students at the National Humanities Center

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Publication Subvention

THE SUSTAINABILITY OF THE CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE, OUR PROGRAMMING, AND OUR ABILITY TO MAKE FUTURE AWARDS DEPENDS ON SUPPORT FROM FRIENDS LIKE YOU. For more information on highlighted funds and how you can make an impact, please visit humanities.ufl.edu/support-us.

Contribution by check can be made to the Center at any time. Simply send your check made payable to “UF Foundation” with “Center for Humanities” reference in the memo to UF CLAS Development, PO Box 117300, Gainesville, FL 32611.

To learn more about the various ways you can make a gift including pledges, matching gifts, and a variety of planned giving opportunities, please visit advancement.clas.ufl.edu or contact Steve Evans, Executive Director of Advancement at (352) 273-3704 or sevans3@ufl.edu.

The University of Florida Foundation, Inc. is a 501(c)3 organization; therefore, your gift may be eligible for a charitable income tax deduction.

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