Ytori - Spring 2018

SPRING 2018 • VOLUME 3, NUMBER 1

THE MAGAZINE FOR THE UNIVERSITY of FLORIDA COLLEGE of LIBERAL ARTS and SCIENCES

Education must not simply teach work – it must teach life.

— W.E.B. DUBOIS

Wikipedia

Cover: Archie Carr was particularly fond of green turtles, not “green sea turtles,” he said, because those were turtles that lived in the Green Sea.

Ben Hicks

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History professor Nancy Hunt has brought the work of Papa Mfumu’eto from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to UF. — By Rachel Wayne

Professors Karen Bjorndal and Alan Bolten carry on the work of Archie Carr to save sea turtles. — By Rachel Wayne

FROM KINSHASA TO GAINESVILLE

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WE ARE ALL ARCHIE CARR’S CHILDREN

Above: ProfessorJack Davis’ book The Gulf — The Making of an American Sea tells the story of the Gulf of Mexico’s life and wildlife.

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QUESTION

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Sticks and Stones

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Disease by the Numbers

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The Deepest Well in the Universe

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Kiss-Met: Joan ’63 and Ronnie Levin

DISCOVER

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Lil’ Mosses

CONNECT

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Secrets of Spanish Florida

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Psychology professor Lisa Scott, left, instructs Stephanie Mbionwu ’18 how to place an electrode cap over the head in Scott’s Brain, Cognition, and Development Lab at UF.

From the Dean

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truly global in scope, examining issues in nature, society, and humanity around the world.

Surveys have shown that more than 80 percent of our incoming students want to have an international experience while they are at UF. Unfortunately, most students will graduate without having gone abroad. Our goal in the years ahead is to expand our study-abroad and semester-exchange programs to meet the demand for cost-effective and meaningful time abroad for our students. Our alumni have been enthusiastic about assisting us in the effort to make these transformative experiences available to all students.

This issue’s cover story on the Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research is a perfect example of the opportunities that we provide for our students to perform purposeful work here and around the world. I hope that you will find it as inspiring as I did. (More good news at press time: Jack Davis, featured on p. 34, received a Pulitzer!)

Go Gators and Go Greater,

David E. Richardson Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Matthew Lester

What an extraordinary year this has been for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences! As most of you have heard by now, the University of Florida achieved a ranking among the U.S. News and World Report Top 10 public comprehensive universities for the first time in our history.

To maintain the momentum, the Board of Trustees and President Fuchs have committed to hiring 500 new faculty in the next few years. The college has been fortunate to be able to create more than 60 new faculty positions for the 2018–19 academic year alone, in addition to positions to replace faculty lost to retirement. The candidates who have accepted our offers are exceedingly talented and diverse in background and experience. They will be instrumental in helping us create a nationally acclaimed student experience and forefront scholarship that will ensure that UF remains among the top public research universities in the country.

In March, the university received more good news: UF is one of only five institutions to receive the 2018 Senator Paul Simon Award for Comprehensive Internationalization, in recognition of our broad commitment to faculty excellence, research, and creating international opportunities for our students. Over 150 countries are represented in the UF community, including over 6,500 international students.

The teaching and research in Liberal Arts and Sciences is

Inset photo, on the left, Rico Mirti with Aidan Doughty in front of the King’s College at Aberdeen University in Scotland, where both are studying for the 2018–19 academic year.

When Brian Harfe was a junior in college, he studied abroad at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. His experience was edifying, and his professors were so impressed with him that they asked if he would like to stay on. He did and graduated from the University of Glasgow.

Betsy Hansen

Today, Harfe is a genetics researcher and associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. One of the many items in his portfolio is overseeing the college’s International Exchange Program, which gives students the opportunity to study abroad for the same amount of money they would normally pay for their UF tuition. Students are responsible for paying for their travel and board. Remembering how positive his own experience was, Harfe and his wife, Kate,

established the Brian and Kate Harfe International Exchange Award to help defray those costs.

The award provides needs-based scholarships for the six universities partnering with Liberal Arts and Sciences, four in the United Kingdom, including Harfe’s own alma mater, and two in Australia. “Having the opportunity to go abroad as an undergraduate was a life-changing experience,” says Harfe.

“My wife and I feel strongly that all UF students, no matter their financial situation, should have this opportunity.”

To learn how you can give back, contact the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Office of Advancement at 352-294-1971 or alumni@ufl.edu.

U N I V E R S I T Y of F L O R I D A

Thesis

CSI TROY — BEFORE THERE WAS HIPPOCRATES, THERE WAS HOMER A classicist chases down the origins of early anatomical description in Homer’s Iliad.

By Barbara Drake

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Wikipedia

On a Friday afternoon in February, KENNETH SILVERMAN, a PhD student in UF’s Department of Classics, stands in front of an audience of medical doctors and historians at the Southern Association for the History of Medicine and Science in Augusta, Ga., speculating on a gruesome battlefield injury reported to have taken place in Asia Minor more than 3,000 years ago. The victim of the injury was a Trojan soldier named Amphiklos who had charged at an enemy commander, Meges Phyleides, only to be skewered in the thigh by a spear.

As described in lines 313-16 of the Iliad, things didn’t end so well for Amphiklos: And Phyleides, when he’d spotted Amphiklos running towards him, was the first to strike, reaching out his spear towards the upper-part of Amphiklos’ leg, where the thickest human muscle lies: and his tendons (artery?) [νεῦρα] were completely severed by the point of the spear, and darkness covered his eyes.

Silverman, reads the lines aloud in the thrilling meter of Greek epic poetry, dactylic hexameter, and pauses. He focuses on the bard’s detailed descriptions of anatomy and on a single, telling word: νεῦρα, or neura. Elsewhere in the Iliad, this plural noun is used to mean “tendons,” but in this passage, neura most likely refers to the femoral artery, whose severing brings death within minutes (“darkness covered his eyes”). What did Homer’s apparent confusion of “tendons” and “artery” signify?

The answer, Silverman explains, was in the Iliad’s historical context. It was written hundreds of years before Hippocrates and the Hellenistic philosophers who laid the groundwork for the scientific method. In fact, he says, “a lack of discrimination in Homer among terms referring to arteries, veins, sinews, and the spinal cord reflects an early stage of Greek anatomical knowledge.” Although Homer lacked separate terms for tendon and artery, his meticulous descriptions of battle wounds, stabbings, and even behead-

Medicine was known and practiced as early as the 4th century BCE. Here, Achilles bandages Patroklos’ arm in the Theban Army.

ings reveal a keen eye for how the human body works — and shed light on the mysteries of pre-Hippocratic thinking.

“On balance, Homer is probably simply describing torn tendons,” says Silverman. “Amphiklos’ neura were snapped, and he died.” And that error in identifying the cause of the warrior’s death represents a key stage in early Western thought: “In ancient medicine and popular belief, leading up to early modern times, tendons and nerves were associated with each other,” says Silverman, “both described with the same Greek and Latin word [neuron/nervus], and both thought to contain a person’s ‘life force’ — the vigorous tautness that holds a person together.”

Homer’s concept of the neura “was used for centuries before Hellenistic physicians discovered the nervous system and borrowed the term to describe its constituents,” says Silverman. In turn, “many modern medical terms still owe their roots to words that first appear in the Iliad and Odyssey, earning Homer a place in the early history of science and medicine.”

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The Mycenaean Warrior Vase, recovered from the acropolis of Mycenae and dated to the 13th century BCE, is one of the most valued treasures of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

blood from a beheading would gush out — perhaps even twelve feet in the air. Splashed conveys the effect.”

Neuron, nerve, phlebitis: these are some of the established medical terms that have their origins in Homeric verse. As Silverman observes, Homer may not have thought of human anatomy and injuries in a scientific way, “but in his ability to find just the right words to describe these phenomena, he took a first step towards explaining them.” q All of the poems in this article were translated by Kenneth Silverman.

Wikipedia

Silverman is interested in the bard’s shaping of the ancient Greek language, which was in a molten state in the 8th century BCE, much like English was at the time of Shakespeare. Homer’s keen sense of delight in the physical world was transmitted directly to listeners through vivid descriptions and onomatopoeia (words that sound like the things they describe).

One of Silverman’s favorite Homeric words refers to movement and translates to “trembling with leaves.” Another is a complex color word — the “deep blue of depth” — to describe water. And, of course, there is the famous Homeric reference to the “wine-dark sea,” a hard-to-visualize color that Silverman translates as “wine-faced.”

Silverman’s father is a microbiologist at the Cleveland Research Institute, a connection that led to Silverman working as a research student in the mid-2000s at the Cleveland Clinic, where he witnessed a laminectomy surgery for lumbar spinal stenosis (removing plaque from around the dura of the spine). Although he wasn’t thinking of the Iliad then, that experience came in handy for translating some of the epic poem’s “excruciating lessons in anatomy.”

As a final example, Silverman recites a passage in which Achilles rampages through the Trojan army and beheads the warrior Deucalion. The lines swell and fall over themselves as Deucalion’s head and helmet fly off together, (de)capped by this arresting detail: “marrow splashed [or, “spurted”] out from the vertebrae / and he lay splayed out on the ground.”

Splashed?

Silverman smiles: “Well, I know from having witnessed a spinal surgery that spinal fluid does not splash out. The medical doctors at the Augusta conference confirmed this. However, doctors have told me that

A sculpture of a fallen warrior at the Temple of Aphaia on the Greek island of Aigina.

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From Kinshasa to Gainesville How Comics of the Congo Came to the Libraries of UF

By Rachel Wayne

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In a locked room at Smathers Library

on the UF campus, rows of manila folders and stacks of cardboard boxes are filled with polyester sleeves and simple copy paper, among which hide one of Smathers’ — and the world’s — most unique collections. The work of Papa Mfumu’eto, a comic artist and illustrator from Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, encompasses thousands of comic books, zines, and advertisements that tackle democratization, gender roles and sociopolitical change, and Congolese mythology and spirituality.

Nancy Rose Hunt, professor of African history, usually focuses on medical and gender issues in Africa, but a request from a Yale colleague to study the sociocultural impact of Tintin au Congo in then-Zaire piqued her interest in comics produced in this central African country, formerly the Belgian Congo. After collaborating on an enormous archive of comics from the 1920s through the ’80s, Hunt discovered Papa Mfumu’eto, one of the most prolific and admired comic artists of the “zine era” running from the late 1970s into the mid-1990s. In 2001, while in Kinshasa for other research, Hunt decided to meet the larger-thanlife artist, whose self-portraits permeate the collection.

“When I arrived at his door, it was a very affluent period for him. He’d just come off some nice contracts,” she says, remembering his fancy stuffed chairs and couch. (The artist frequently does commission work for advertisements, many of which blend in motifs and recurring characters from his comics, beloved by Kinshasans.) “His work was coming off the ceiling and under the chairs, just everywhere. I have a background as an archivist before I became a historian, so my instincts were to preserve it and conserve it,” she recalls. “He’d never heard the word ‘archive’ before, but he was happy to hear it.” Hunt persuaded him to entrust the collection to her. It was crucial to find a secure home for what she calls a “gold mine” for any Africanist.

Getting the archive to America was not a seamless endeavor. However, more than 15 years later, Hunt is pleased with the outcome, as is Smathers’ African Studies curator, Daniel Reboussin. “I wasn’t sure it would all happen as easily and beautifully as it did,” Hunt says. She returned to Kinshasa in 2007 to read some of the comics with Papa Mfumu’eto, while working on her Lingala, the language in which the bulk of the text is written. Hunt knew she wanted a repository for the collection in the United States or Europe, although some warned her that no American institution would be interested, because this kind of comic art was better known in Europe. Pitching and moving the collection would be risky. Hunt focused her scouting in France and Belgium during 2014 and 2015 when she had a research year in Paris. To her delight, Paris’ Fondation Cartier included examples from the archive in a 2015 exhibit on Congolese

art; this inclusion thrilled both Hunt and Papa Mfumu’eto, who produced an essay and several interviews, respectively, that signal-boosted the collection. Intrigued, Paris’ Quai Branly Museum made a bid for the collection to be stored and exhibited there.

Yet in the end, Gainesville seemed to be the pre-destined home of the Papa Mfumu’eto archive. The University of Florida was recruiting Hunt, who also struck up a friendship with Reboussin, to whom archiving the work was especially important. Many of the comics were created during the period of transition from the Mobutu regime to democracy. “It was a time where people weren’t free to speak about politics, about opposition,” he says. “Some of [the comics’] themes might not be overt political speech, but are referring to political conditions.” He and his team have spent close to 100 hours processing the archive and expect many more to go, with an anticipated completion date in 2019 or

A comic with Mobutu Sese Seko asking, “Is my face about to disappear from Congo?”

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2020. This dedication is aimed to protect and preserve for posterity. “We should make sure that things are available to scholars a hundred or more years later. I’m sure that 100 years from now, people will be interested in that transition point in Congolese history.”

The collection stayed in Paris in a safety-deposit box for about 18 months while Hunt discussed possible homes for it with Parisian curators. Yet Smathers Library, along with the Harn Museum of Art’s history of curating Congolese art with Belgian institutions, the Center for African Studies, and the local comics school, the Sequential Artists Workshop, collectively whispered to the appropriateness of a Gainesville home, and Hunt, listening with intrigue, accepted the job offer from UF. Finally, the time had come to bring the collection to Gainesville. Hunt and Amy Vigilante of University Galleries personally traveled to Paris to retrieve the collection, puzzling on the flight how to best wrap them. The return journey was successful, and Hunt and Reboussin opened the packages on March 9, 2017, at a small round table in the locked room at Library East. Now, Reboussin and the Smathers archival team are carefully processing the pages, some of which are original paintings and sketches, some of which are printed on paper that time has reduced to mere wisps. There was very little

Zombies, mermaids, and more appear throughout the collection, as do creatures of superstition such as chameleons.

The adventures of Papa Mfumu’eto’s frequent heroine, Princess D’Or.

organization to the collection when it first arrived; due to the many fragments and condition of the materials and without a familiarity with the sequential art form, archivists met new challenges in processing the collection.

Thankfully, Hunt had pinpointed the Sequential Artists Workshop while eyeing Gainesville, and its founder, Tom Hart, was happy to come on board the project. When he’s not using the comics for public outreach on campus and in local schools — “Tom is a beautiful ambassador for African studies,” says Hunt — he’s using his expertise in comic layout, illustration, and production to help the archivists know how to process the collection.

“We don’t have but maybe a dozen complete comic books,” says Reboussin. Hart is able to match pages that were likely in the same spread and extrapolate from the layout off cells how large the complete comic book would have been. “He knows immediately if it was a 16-, 12-, or 8-page comic book. He sees how the text and the image fit together physically within the cells. It’s a different level of insight than someone who’s looking at the imagery itself or other themes in Congolese society. It was wonderful to have these conversations.”

The conversations continued at the 2018 Gwendolen M. Carter Conference hosted by the Center for African

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Studies. Hunt co-organized the conference with Alioune Sow, professor of French and African studies at UF; the Sequential Artists Workshop remained deeply involved, and the creative dialogue between image and text expanded into special appearances by Congolese novelist Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Australian writer David Carlin, and Didier Viodé, a performing artist from Benin. Through connections made at the conference, Hunt and Reboussin anticipate further exhibition of the archive, notably a Belgian museum in Ostend in 2020.

Papa Mfumu’eto is unique in that he produced comics for so long using a non-colonial language, says Hunt, and she hopes to introduce Lingala studies to UF. Reboussin too sees a world of possibility in the collection. “It’s just great working with a diverse group of people,” he says. “Everyone sees something different, especially in a collection that’s really rich. The more you look, it just gets deeper and deeper.” q

[Below] “There is a very strong religious imagination inside this archive, full of things about the relationship between the visible world and the invisible world — the visible world being the concrete material world that we live in, the invisible world being a world of spirits and witches and ghosts, and also the relationship between the living and the world of the dead. Many American students are kinda shocked at first sight, because there are a lot of strange beings that are floating through it, images of cemeteries and graves. There’s something a little spooky about this collection.” — Nancy Rose Hunt

Many Papa Mfumu’eto comics feature men turning into beasts.

[Above] Political leaders such as the infamous dictator Mobutu Sese Seko; the independent Democratic Republic of the Congo’s first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba; the unpopular president Laurent-Désiré Kabila; and King Leopold II of DRC’s Belgian-colonial past appear frequently in Papa Mfumu’eto’s work.

[Above] “There is a lot of stuff about domestic struggles between female rivals, i.e. co-wives or co-lovers in the same household. Some of these intimate themes burst out into things that are more metaphorically political, e.g. a man who turns into a snake, devours a sexy woman, and then turns that sexy woman into dollar bills. As soon as that image appeared on the Kinshasa streets, people understand he was talking about Mobutu.”

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Ask the Experts

STICKS AND STONES UF experts explain how research can address school and interpersonal violence.

By Rachel Wayne

Jon Krause

UF faculty members Maddy Coy, Dorothy Espelage, Abigail Fagan, and Bonnie Moradi all tackle social issues from their respective academic discipline, and each has a remarkably interdisciplinary background. Fagan combines sociology and criminology to study how communities can prevent violence.

Coy is a women’s studies scholar with community-based research and public policy expertise. Espelage is a psychologist with extensive knowledge of child development. Moradi uses her background in psychology and women’s studies to direct UF’s Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies Research. All four are core or affiliate faculty in the Center. Their areas of study — bullying, discrimination and inequalities, violence against women, and youth violence — have been trending topics for years, and the researchers aim to find the best ways to merge theory with data, knowledge with practice, and policy with results.

work. Effective programs focus on building skills, teaching kids how to make better decisions, how to think about what they want to achieve in the future, and resist peer pressures to use drugs or commit crimes.

ESPELAGE: Not all kids who bully are rejected. It’s not just “bad kids” who do bad things. And so, zero-tolerance approaches have been shown not to work, because these behaviors aren’t occurring in a vacuum. The approach I publish quite a bit on is a social-emotional learning program that teaches kids effective communication and conflict resolution skills.

MANY OF YOU HAVE DONE APPLIED WORK, THAT IS, USING YOUR RESEARCH TO EFFECT REAL CHANGE OR IN COLLABORATION WITH COMMUNITY GROUPS. WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR SUCCESSES? FAGAN: I have done a lot of hands-on work in this area.

Before I came to UF, I spent five years at the University of Washington. I was involved in a randomized controlled trial that was a scientific evaluation of a community-based crime and drug intervention strategy. I was a trainer who went out to communities and talked to them about their concerns regarding youth delinquency, violence, and drug use. What we were testing was a structured process of mobilizing community members — educating them about the causes of crime, gauging which causes of the crime were prevalent in their community, and then putting into place effective prevention strategies that targeted those causes. Getting the whole community involved was important to show youth that the community cared about them.

FAGAN: Similarly, what we have learned is that when you just try to scare kids into not using drugs or breaking the law, it’s another one of those deterrence tactics that doesn’t

COY: I am a feminist scholar who is interested in how we connect up the knowledge from practice — working with victims/survivors of violence — with theories and concepts

NOT ONLY ARE YOU ALL BASED IN AN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION, BUT MUCH OF YOUR WORK REVOLVES AROUND USING RESEARCH TO MAKE CAMPUSES SAFER. WHAT DOES AND DOESN’T WORK? FAGAN: Historically, and even today still, the first response is what we call “deterrence” — a very reactive response that is meant to punish criminals, make more arrests, and put them away for longer years. The problem is that that doesn’t get at the root causes. What does work are skills-building programs that teach kids how to make better decisions.

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about inequalities. I previously was Deputy Director of the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit of London Metropolitan University, and before that, I worked in organizations such as women’s shelters with women in the sex industry. Now, what I hope is that my students go out and have these conversations with their peers. I think one of the greatest things in the classroom is to hear them say, “You know, I was having this conversation with my roommate just last night!” You can hear that they’ve taken what we’ve discussed in class and begun to challenge things they think are problematic.

ESPELAGE: All my work happens in schools and with community groups that have direct impact on bully prevention and promoting positive school climate. Also, my scholarship has been directly used by nonprofit organizations to advocate for state and federal legislation aimed at protecting sexual and gender minority youth, advocating for students with disabilities, and greater resources for school prevention efforts.

THESE TOPICS ARE TRENDING IN THE NEWS AND ON SOCIAL MEDIA, AS WELL AS IN POPULAR CULTURE. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PORTRAYAL OF AND DIALOGUE SURROUNDING THESE TOPICS? FAGAN: The biggest myth is always that crime is out of control, worse than it’s ever been, but in fact we know that crime rates have decreased significantly since the ’80s. But we focus so much attention on heinous crimes that it promotes the idea there’s so much of it going on. Or it’s the idea that we don’t know why it happens, and we can’t prevent it. There’s always this sentiment about teenagers — “kids will be kids,” they’re going to drink alcohol, get into fights, and no one really gets hurt — but the reality is that some of those kids go on to become pretty serious offenders or have problems with drug use and drug addiction. We know that if we can build better schools, create healthier families, and support a stronger community, we can actually reduce delinquency.

ESPELAGE: I’ve done work with the Ad Council developing media guidelines for reporters because they don’t always cover bullying events and laws accurately. Sometimes this can have the effect of justifying punitive responses to bullying or even glamorizing the suicides of bullying victims.

Eighty percent of the news coverage on bullying is on bullying-related suicide. Ten percent is about legislation. Only ten percent is about prevention.

COY: Anything that starts a conversation about sexual violence and sexual harassment is a good thing, in particular, the way social media enables different voices to be heard.

I think that the gains of #MeToo are in enabling women to

name their experiences. What I was really happy to see is the shift toward #TimesUp and the follow-up of making connections with the actions of perpetrators — asking why they did that rather than what the victims did. I think that was a very important shift.

MORADI: In the media, there are subtle framings that are just so ubiquitous that we don’t see them anymore, and when you do bring them to light, there’s a lot of resistance to viewing them as problematic because they have been so ubiquitous — part of how we do things. The challenge in moving from not seeing to seeing is that when you question the thing that has not been questioned, you are accused of being biased. Yet the thing — a song, for example — represents an unspoken particular set of values, but it’s viewed as neutral.

HOW DOES AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH HELP YOUR WORK? COY: We have academic subjects that provide the theoretical tools that enable students to engage with the decades of thinking that’s been going on. Activism comes out of those ideas, then feeds back into those ideas. We need to recognize the value of the scholarship that does that.

FAGAN: There’s still more work to be done to uncover more evidence about what leads to these behaviors, so that we can then design interventions that are actually going to change those factors, and so that we can better identify the kids who are at risk and get them the services that they need early on.

Violence has many causes, including psychological, social, and structural factors. So, it’s important for social scientists to collaborate with others and play a role in both types of research about youth problems, both the traditional science about what causes delinquency, violence, and drug use, and also designing interventions and testing them out to see if they’re actually effective in preventing these behaviors.

ESPELAGE: Youth violence is a complex public health issue that needs all disciplines on board and working together rather than in isolation. My intervention studies and evaluations involve working with other researchers in public health, education, sociology, social work, school psychology, and criminology. Translation of my research is achieved as I work with teachers, school administrators, etc.

MORADI: We can’t conceptualize, say, sexism in isolation — it’s interconnected with racism and heterosexism and class inequality and all of these systems of inequality.

COY: — and for discussion of that, we create those spaces in our classroom.

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Global Studies

DISEASE BY THE NUMBERS UF professor uses mathematical models to explain viral dynamics and drug resistance.

By Rachel Wayne

T

here are six major genotypes of Hepatitis C infections. In the U.S., 70 percent of cases are caused by genotype 1. In an infected person, about 1012 virus particles are produced each day.

There is no vaccine, but chronic infection can be cured 95 percent of the time with new anti-viral medications.

Having so many numbers to wrangle, UF applied mathematician Libin Rong is eager to tackle the problems facing healthcare providers, pharmaceutical developers, and epidemiologists. How quickly do viruses reproduce, and how does that rate change after drug treatment? How much drug treatment is needed to be effective?

Rong was born in a small village in China, where he became interested in math at a young age. He went to college in Shanghai to study pure mathematics, but he soon delved

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Hepatitis C is a flavivirus that causes liver and circulatory problems.

into the applied realm by modeling neural networks for artificial intelligence. In a postdoc position in mathematical biology at Los Alamos National Laboratory, he shifted further toward a fusion of the natural and mathematical sciences. Intrigued by the many collaborative opportunities at UF, he left his previous position at Oakland University to join UF’s Department of Mathematics and work with researchers at UF’s College of Medicine and the Emerging Pathogens Institute. He also is thrilled to have a large pool of graduate students from which to choose as his mentees. “I enjoy supervising students,” he says.

Rong develops mathematical models to predict the numbers of diseases at each point: spread among a population, infection and onset of symptoms, response to drugs, and emergence of drug resistance. “We use differential equation systems to describe a biological process, then we compare the modeling projection with the real data” — which he obtains from colleagues in health sciences — “so that we can determine or test different mechanisms underlying those biological data. We can also quantify the drug effectiveness,” he says.

Recently, Rong has been focusing on Hepatitis C. “A lot of drugs have become available, but the virus can mutate, and if a drug is used as a mono-therapy — if we just use one drug — drug resistance can emerge very quickly,” says Rong. “I developed a mathematical model to explain why drug resistance is expected so rapidly after the mono-therapy, and then to estimate how many drugs would be needed to overcome the resistance.” Currently, he is collaborating with researchers at UF’s medical school to determine which combination of drugs is an optimal therapy for Hepatitis C. He also is looking at how Hepatitis C treatments might apply to Chikungunya, a mosquito-borne disease with no approved drug therapies.

Rong’s other primary focus is HIV. Particular characteristics of HIV make its eradication challenging. In particular, latent reservoirs of the virus can reemerge after years of treatment, even after the initial dormancy period. “We don’t know why this pool is so stable even after continuous therapy for many years,” he says. Patients experience “blips,” or temporary surges in the viral load (the amount of virus in the blood). Whether the blip is just a blip, or a sign of failing treatment or drug resistance, can be addressed through mathematical modeling. “We proposed a few mechanisms to try to explain this blip and the stability of the latent reservoir, and we have one mechanism confirmed by data,” Rong says. With continued collaborations among UF’s colleges, Rong hopes that a solution can be found.

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Gigi Marino

Pop Quiz

History of Philosophy Philosophy lecturer Peter Westmoreland challenges you to remember your humanities classes. Grab a pencil and see how well you do for a chance to win a free T-shirt!

QUESTION 1

QUESTION 3

Socrates argues in Apology that only a few, say, the trainers of horses can actually improve horses, and likewise for the youth. Socrates makes this argument to demonstrate that his accuser at trial brings charges against him frivolously.

What kind of argument is this?

Whereas Thomas Hobbes depicts “the life of man” as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” Jean-Jacques Rousseau sees him “satisfying his hunger under an oak, and his thirst at the first brook … all his wants are completely supplied.”

What reason does Rousseau give for rejecting Hobbes’ view?

(A) Circular argument

(A) Humans have natural pity or empathy toward others

(B) Argument by analogy

(B) Humans are far too rational in their natural state to understand the prisoner’s dilemma

(C) Cartesian

QUESTION 2 In the Meditations, René Descartes famously engages in skepticism, doubting all of his beliefs in order to secure a firm foundation for the sciences. “I am, I exist” is necessarily true every time I utter it or conceive it in my mind.” This is the first unshakeable truth Descartes discovers. What is the last major truth Descartes discovers in the Meditations?

(C) V oltaire’s Candide has solved the problems Hobbes raised

QUESTION 4 In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir famously asks, “What is a woman?” Which of the following is an answer that she gives?

(A) She is the Other

(A) The mind exists

(B) She is the rational conception of moral law

(B) Corporeal things exist

(C) S he is an abstract concept lacking in situatedness

(C) God exists Send answers to gigimarino@ufl.edu. One person will win a T-shirt from a random drawing of entries with correct answers.

YTORI — SPRING 2018 | 17

American Tales

By Rachel Wayne and Gigi Marino

Sersesh Ab-Heter is an activist in Natchez, Miss. UF students are keeping his story alive thorugh oral history.

O

ral history involves the collection of stories about historical events or history in the making.

SAMUEL PROCTOR ’41, MA’42, PHD’58 was deeply interested in the emerging field but observed that oral historians were interviewing politicians and other leaders. One problem with traditional historical inquiry is its tendency to rely on letters, newspapers, and other primary sources that favor the experiences and views of those in power. The methodology of oral history is crucial to getting the full story, but Proctor also thought that the “ordinary” people needed to be included.

The Samuel Proctor Oral History Program (SPOHP) at UF does just that. Proctor began by interviewing the first Jewish students at UF and, to this day, the program’s researchers talk to those who live at the cruces of sociopolitical change,

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especially those whose voices have been underrepresented in history. Their purview is marginalized and underrepresented groups, including veterans, the LGBTQ community, and civil rights activists. SPOHP researchers record and transcribe the interviews, which may last between five minutes and an hour, to produce comprehensive, immersive historical documents.

“There have been so many stories that have been missed throughout history. This is a great way to not miss them,” says project coordinator BRENDA STROUD ’20.

“It takes a village to do good fieldwork,” says UF history professor Paul Ortiz, who has been the director for the last 10 years. Ortiz met Proctor once, decades ago, when visiting UF from Duke University. “I was this anonymous grad student trying to write my dissertation on African American history in Florida,” he says. “Sam didn’t know me from

Courtesy of SPOHP

Samuel Proctor became the first UF Historian and Archivist when he was still a PhD student.

He never left the role. Proctor was heavily involved with UF, so much so that rumor told he had four or five, maybe six, offices on the campus. Now, his name prefixes one of the nation’s largest oral history programs — in a field of inquiry that he helped pioneer.

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Courtesy of SPOHP

Adam, but when I walked into the Oral History Program, he just started talking to me. He gave me a whole afternoon. He was an incredibly generous man — a role model of what a professor should be.”

Proctor was actively involved with civil rights efforts at UF and in Gainesville. “In the mid-1960s, Sam was one of a small group of faculty members who signed a published statement in support of integration in Gainesville,” says Ortiz. “When you see Sam’s name, you realize what an example he set for the rest of them.”

“ W E INTERVIEWED A LOT OF THE SURVIVORS OF THE 9/11 TERROR ATTACKS. IF I WANTED THE OBJECTIVE TAKE ON THAT, THERE’S A LOT OUT THERE, BUT IF I REALLY WANT TO KNOW WHAT IT MEANT TO THOSE PEOPLE, I HAVE TO TALK TO THEM.” The Oral History Program continues Proctor’s legacy by using oral history methodology to expand an African American history of Florida — and beyond. In fall 2016, a group of researchers departed Gainesville for Mississippi

with a packed itinerary that took them from Natchez to Sumner, each stop dedicated to a milestone in civil rights history. “I felt like I was there in the history,” says Stroud.

The Mississippi Freedom Project has continued for the past two years and benefits from ongoing partnerships with community groups, says Ortiz. “We are the bridge builders.

We don’t study, we learn,” he says.

“Every moment is part of the experience of learning,” says student assistant and history major ANUPA KOTIPOYINA ’17, who transcribes interviews for the program. “A lot of people think transcription is boring, but there have been a lot of powerful interviews I’ve gotten to transcribe,” she says. One of her favorites was an interview with an activist reminiscing about Martin Luther King Jr.’s visit to her house in St. Augustine. “Imagine being the host to such a seminal figure in the civil rights movement in one of the few Floridian cities he visited.”

Listening to the researchers tell their stories about their story-collecting is ample evidence that history isn’t a stack of books and letters, but a living entity embedded in society, coded in bodies, and grown through language.

In 1921, Congress reluctantly unveiled a statue of suffragists Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott, then condemned it to the basement of the Capitol. Seventy-five years later, Joan Wages, who became

Project coordinator Holland Hall contemplating women’s rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer at her gravesite.

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The Samuel Proctor Oral History Program not only teaches students how to interview and archive oral histories but also how to do scholarly research.

a lot out there, but if I really want to know what it meant to those people, I have to talk to them.”

Oral history enjoys a cross-pollination between the humanities and journalism. Says journalism student and SPOHP contributor DREA CORNEJO ’17, “The oral history methodology introduced me to a different type of storytelling, pushing me to create projects with a more in-depth account of personal experiences and truly giving the stories the fullness they deserve.” Each project is a collaboration with the relevant department, center, or program in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences: the Women’s March and LGBTQ History projects with the Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies Research, the Mississippi Freedom Project with African American Studies, and, with the Bob Graham Center for Public Service, the 9/11 Project, which captured stories of people from around the world talking about that devastating day.

“The whole field is interdisciplinary,” says Ortiz. Because state funds cannot go toward student fieldwork, SPOHP’s research requires collaborations with other UF units to secure other funding. “And we’re into performance now!” says Ortiz. With the Center for Arts in Medicine, SPOHP

Timothy Sofranko

the CEO of the National Women’s History Museum, was heavily involved in the campaign to return the statue to the Capitol’s Rotunda. The opposition remained, with even congresswomen calling the statue ugly and claiming it had no historical merit. Wages, who once had been denied a job when an interviewer told her she’d “just get pregnant,” was passionate about getting the suffragists represented in the Rotunda. The Woman Suffrage Statue Campaign was successful, and on Sept. 26, 1996, Congress passed a resolution to move the statue. More than 20 years later, Wages related this story to UF student MARGARET CLARKE ’18, who was visiting D.C. for the Women’s March on Washington as part of the Oral History Program’s new research project.

“It was an amazing interview,” says Clarke.

The impetus to capture “history in the making” has driven several of the Oral History Program’s recent projects. The experiences of those present at milestone events and the reflections of observers upon those events are equally powerful data in oral history research. “Because we swim in that ocean of subjectivity, we can ask all kinds of questions,” says Ortiz. “We interviewed a lot of the survivors of the 9/11 terror attacks. If I wanted the objective take on that, there’s

Courtesy of SPOHP

SPOHP researchers interviewed marchers, counter-protestors, and passersby at the Women’s March on Washington, on Jan. 21, 2017.

researchers recently co-wrote and produced a play, Voices from the March, based on their experiences documenting the Women’s March and Inauguration Day in 2017. The play was performed at the Social Justice Summit presented by the College of Education in January 2018. “People contacted us after seeing it at the summit and commented on how important it was for their families and daughters to see it,” says Ortiz.

Many of the program’s efforts aim to popularize and decolonize history. By cultivating a living history, “we can bring history to kitchen table conversations across the globe,” says Stroud. To wit, the Oral History Program also conducts outreach through its podcast. Kotipoyina, who works on the podcast to share their research, considers it a valuable tool to help those unheard voices become heard. She intends to

become a history teacher and bring oral history into the high school classroom.

The Samuel Proctor Oral History Program demonstrates how the transformative and productive potential of storytelling is crucial to a decolonized approach to history.

SPOHP researchers document history as it’s being made and store the memories of those who witnessed significant events. By participating in this witnessing of memory, they create history themselves. In collecting the researchers’ accounts of their research in a method not dissimilar from theirs, their passion and personal revelations become clear, with adjectives such as “life-changing” and “amazing” peppering the conversation. Oral history has got them hooked. “I really like listening to people’s stories,” says Stroud. “Everyone has a story to tell.” q YTORI — SPRING 2018 | 21

Amber Newsome

Undergraduate students learn both plant genetics and data analysis in an immersive botany class.

By Rachel Wayne

Ceratodon purpureus has a worldwide range and even grows in Antarctica.

In the fall 2017 semester, 55 students in BOT 2010, an introductory botany course, worked on their green thumbs by growing fire moss (Ceratodon purpureus). The class included a mix of majors, and even those who weren’t budding botanists found something to love in the project.

“It was truly a class about science, but it isn’t just for people who are science-related majors,” says EMILY GORDON ’21, a biology major who now plans to add a second major in plant science to her path. “It was a really personal, small class and had majors from biology, to landscape design, to journalism, to linguistics.”

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SARAH CAREY PHD, a graduate student working with botany professor Stuart McDaniel in his lab, developed the idea for the experiment. Typically, the BOT 2010 term projects had involved flowering plants, but this presented a space issue for the lab. Carey, who says she specializes in mosses, realized that “mosses would be the perfect thing because they’re very small, and you could have lots and lots of replication in a very small space — replication is very important for biological experiments,” she says.

“The McDaniel lab has been translating some of the lab’s core research initiatives into research-based expe-

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The small, fuzzy green plants have a unique aesthetic that was not lost on the students, who showed a great appreciation for them. “What intrigues me about botany is that it focuses more on plants rather than on how plants can be useful for humans,” says PALMER CRIPPEN ’20, who is double majoring in plant studies and visual studies.

“From this perspective stems these studies and research that reveal just how complex and marvelous plants actually are.” Gordon agrees: “I’ve always enjoyed plants, doing gardening on my own time, and just appreciating their aesthetic. I was interested in learning about the science of something I already loved, and possibly doing so in a fun and casual environment.”

Horticulture aside, students also learned data analysis and the programming language R. “We asked, ‘How can students gain skills from us that will be useful in their career paths?’” says Carey. It was a new but crucial achievement for many students. “It was difficult at first to understand what the measurements I received actually meant,” says DANIELA MENENDEZ ’21. “Once I grasped the concept, I was able to make more rational assumptions, which led me to consider what a future project with the mosses may look like. Overall, it was an incredible experiment, and I would love to do it all over again.” q

Amber Newsome

Ceratodon purpureus typically does not exceed 1.3 cm in height.

riences for the BOT 2010 students,” says postdoc Lily Lewis, the course instructor working with McDaniel. “The research involves growing tiny moss plants and determining if the sex or population origin of each moss affects how fast the mosses grow.” The students grew their own mosses and compared their rates of growth to the plants’ genetic profile. All groups studied the effect of their plants’ sex on their growth rate, but each group had mosses from a different geographic area. At the end of the semester, they presented their findings in a poster symposium. In the breezeway of Newins–Zigler Hall, excitement filled the cool November air as the students eagerly approached passersby to tell them about their “lil’ mosses.”

“ From this perspective stems these studies and research that reveal just how complex and marvelous plants actually are.”

The McDaniel Lab provides experiential opportunities for students.

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Andrew Beardmore (Univ. of Leicester) and NASA/Swift

UF astrophysicist studies the magnetic fields and cosmic streams pouring out of a black hole.

By Rachel Wayne

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space telescope, to measure the 2015 streams produced by V404 Cygni, which has such outbursts every two to three decades. Although prevailing theories suggested otherwise, the magnetic field around the black hole was actually fairly weak, making its ejection of the super streams, which clock in at nearly the speed of light, yet another cosmic mystery.

“T

here’s this childhood awe, with your jaw hanging open, this feeling of ‘Wow, look at that thing,’” says Stephen Eikenberry about his area of black holes and neutron stars — what he describes as the most extreme environments in the universe. “And the physics are poorly understood, so it’s a mystery as well.” Eikenberry, who holds a joint appointment in UF’s Departments of Astronomy and Physics, has dedicated his career to this mystery. Most recently, he and his research group measured the magnetic field in V404 Cygni, a binary system featuring a black hole with a diameter of 64 kilometers.

The weirdness of black holes has been a point of fascination since the late 18th century, says Eikenberry, but it wasn’t until Einstein developed his general theory of relativity that astrophysicists began to predict — and gradually affirm — some of his strange predictions, such as that near and inside black holes, gravity was enormously strong, particles would spin to extraordinary velocities, and time itself would slow. “One thing we do know is that black holes seem to grab up some of the cosmic material that is close by [in this case, from the normal star in the binary system] and eject it in streams of light,” says Eikenberry. “Pushing steady, concentrated streams of that material out of the deepest gravitational well in the universe at nearly the speed of light … that’s a trick that we don’t understand.”

His group, which comprises six PhD students and four undergraduates, aims to enhance their understanding. In their recent Science paper, for which Eikenberry’s graduate student YIGIT DALILAR was lead author, they share some of their findings from their Canarias InfraRed Camera Experiment (CIRCE). Eikenberry says with pride that CIRCE is located at the Canary Islands’ Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) — the world’s largest telescope. CIRCE led an international bevy of instruments, including NASA’s NuStar

THE WEIRDNESS OF BLACK HOLES HAS BEEN A POINT OF FASCINATION SINCE THE LATE 18TH CENTURY, SAYS EIKENBERRY. To explore these mysteries, Eikenberry and his group focus on infrared and optical astronomy, between which the lines are sometimes blurred. As an example, CIRCE is a near-infrared instrument and measures radiation with wavelengths slightly longer than visible light. Eikenberry also designed and, with his graduate students, postdocs, and engineers, built FLAMINGOS-2, an infrared spectrograph located at Chile’s Gemini South, one of the twin telescopes of the Gemini Observatory. They joined the LIGO and Virgo Scientific Collaborations in detecting the collision and merger of two neutron stars in 2017. Infrared and near-infrared detection allow astronomers to study distant astronomical phenomena, especially major emitters and “things that go bang,” says Eikenberry.

Eikenberry studied at Harvard, where his dissertation focused on the emission mechanisms of pulsars (highly magnetized and dense neutron stars), under Giovanni Fazio, a renowned physicist in infrared astronomy. “We built the world’s first photon-counting infrared detector for astronomy and used that to make very high-speed observations of the Crab Pulsar, which is in the Crab Nebula. It flashes off and on 30 times a second — roughly,” he adds. Eikenberry then began a professorship at Cornell University. However, the opportunity to work on Gran Telescopio Canarias located on the island of La Palma, Spain, inspired Eikenberry to leave the Ivy League. UF is the only stand-alone educational institution in the world that partners with GTC, the largest telescope on Earth. “For me, the big draw leaving a tenured Ivy League professorship and Ithaca, New York, to come to UF was and is to work with GTC,” says Eikenberry. After designing and building CIRCE for GTC, he’s now working on another instrument for GTC, MIRADAS, an externally funded $10 million detector on which UF is the lead institution and he is the principal investigator.

“We’re really excited about the future of the MIRADAS instrument and more findings from CIRCE as well,” Eikenberry says. “This latest result with CIRCE is, for me, a great personal fulfillment of a long-held dream.” q YTORI — SPRING 2018 | 25

Bernard Brzezinski

In March, the Century Tower was lit green to commemorate Mental Health Awarenesss Week. Student ambassadors from UF AWARE initiated the weeklong project.

We Are All Children

By Rachel Wayne Above, in the center Alan Bolten and Karen Bjordnal are flanked by graduate students Alexandra Gulick and George Glen.

Betsy Hansen

Archie Carr, a larger-than-life man who could summon a snapping turtle named Jasper at will, paved the way for the conservation of sea turtles around the world. Karen Bjorndal, his former graduate student, and Alan Bolten today direct the Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research at UF, carrying on his life’s work and legacy. In many ways, the University of Florida saved the sea turtles.

UF Library – Archives

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hen UF Distinguished Professor of Biology KAREN BJORNDAL PHD’79 was an undergraduate student in the 1970s, she set her research sights on iguanas. Set on going to the Galápagos, she embarked on a six-month research trip to study the social behavior of land iguanas, but soon found herself enthralled by a different reptile. “I would sit on the coastline and stare out for hours at the sea as green turtles would pass by, coming to the surface to breathe,” she recalls. “I was really intrigued by these two different worlds converging.” She left the land iguanas behind and went to UF determined to study with the man who knew more about green turtles than anyone in the world: ARCHIE CARR PHD’37. In fact, Carr knew more about all realm-crossing sea turtles at the time.

Carr, who was the first person to earn a PhD in zoology from UF, had also fallen under the sea turtle spell, publishing his first paper on them in 1942. “He had worked primarily with freshwater species,” says Bjorndal. “Then, he published Handbook of Turtles: The Turtles of the United States, Canada, and Baja California [1952], and he started reading about sea turtles to complete those sections. He became entranced, particularly with their ability to navigate. He heard stories from Nicaraguan fishermen who had caught, marked and sent green turtles to Florida markets, and then six months later, caught those same turtles back in Nicaragua after they had been released from holding pens by storms.”

Yet the scientific literature had significant gaps that Carr took it upon himself to fill. “When you go back to early literature, it’s hard to remember that almost nothing was known and no one was studying them,” says Bjorndal.

Carr’s legacy is multifold, and a large component of it is the research center established in his name at UF located in Carr Hall. Bjorndal now directs the Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research (ACCSTR), which trains biology graduate students to become marine biologists with a conservation focus, as Carr had. “He was a fantastic scientist who wrote beautifully for the general public, and that is what rallied the troops, when he first learned in the late ’40s and ’50s that turtles were undergoing incredible decline,” says Bjorndal.

Archie Carr was born in Mobile, Ala., a delta-based city with a Gulf-pounded coast, a land of reptile-filled swamps, including the near-mythical alligator snapping turtle. He lived and studied in Alachua County most of his adult life,

Sea turtles’ migratory patterns are extensive and complicated. Carr pioneered methods of tracking their movements. Here, he attaches a weather balloon to a turtle.

as a biology undergraduate student turned herpetology graduate student turned UF graduate research professor.

Appropriately, his Micanopy home overlooked a pond that was home to a gator, who once chased him up a tree in defense of her nest, as well as an alligator snapping turtle who responded to the name Carr gave it, Jasper.

“Archie had so many great stories like that,” says Bjorndal.

“With Archie, anything became an adventure.” That Carr was larger-than-life in so many ways is captured in archival photographs showing Carr affectionately holding turtles, admiring hatchlings’ march to the sea, and working with students on various conservation tasks, including attaching weather balloons to the turtles to track their journeys.

Contemporary researchers’ comments on Carr use descriptors such as “inspiring,” “passionate,” and “generous” that appear again and again. “Archie did so much that no one could have replaced him,” says Bjorndal. After his passing in 1987, she picked up the Center’s research and graduate student mentoring, while another of Carr’s students, PETER PRITCHARD ’69, took on the mantle of Carr’s famed writing for a popular audience.

Alongside Bjorndal is her husband, ALAN BOLTEN PHD’86, whom she met while both were graduate students at UF and brought into the sea turtle spirit. He had been YTORI — SPRING 2018 | 29

studying the social behavior of insects, especially the Africanized killer bee for his dissertation. “I introduced him to more peaceful creatures, and ever since then we’ve worked together,” she says.

Conservationists, marine biologists, and herpetologists around the world esteem Carr for his inception and continued invigoration of sea turtle research and conservation, including significant insights into nesting behavior of the mysterious Kemp’s Ridley. Sea turtles’ long lifespans, wide ranges, and scarce appearances on land make them challenging study subjects; meanwhile, they are so intricately connected with disparate ecosystems that they are themselves barometers of the oceans’ health — and susceptible to its many ailments, from overfishing to coastal development to climate change.

On all of these counts, the Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research has made great strides. Its researchers revealed a solution for the well-documented problem of hatchlings confusing artificial lights with the moon’s reflection upon the sea: low-pressure sodium lights that the hatchlings cannot perceive are now used in buildings and streets along the Florida coastline. They discovered that warming oceans mean slower growth rates and quintupled the estimate for when green turtles reach sexual maturity; life cycles must be taken into account for nest-protection programs. They pushed for a ban in the Bahamas on

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harvesting sea turtles for food, a practice that decimated the local turtle population. The ban finally took effect in 2009, a milestone that Bolten and Bjorndal found very rewarding.

“We see so many green turtles now!” says Bjorndal.

Such accomplishments attest to the strength of scholarship and breadth of research conducted by ACCSTR. Their scope extends from molecular population genetics to grand overviews of turtle migration patterns. “One really nice part about being at UF is the diversity of disciplines that are here,” says Bolten. “We really take advantage of that in terms of collaborating with colleagues in the medical school or the vet school, coastal engineering, wildlife, the law school.

Our research is quite diverse, and we go through periods of different focuses, depending on interests of graduate students and what’s important with respect to answering certain conservation questions.”

Recently, those questions have revolved around seagrass habitats and sea turtles’ interaction with them. The green turtle is unusual in that it is primarily herbivorous and will happily eat seagrasses and algae. “The green turtle has always been Archie’s main focus, and mine as well,” says Bjorndal, whose dissertation described the fermentation process, akin to a horse’s digestive system, that the green turtle uses to digest seagrass and algae. Not unlike horses, green turtles graze on pastures — of seagrass that sweep the ocean floor. Currently, several graduate students’ projects tackle the ecology and behavioral patterns of the green turtles who “mow” the grass.

Following the Bahamian ban and years of successful conservation efforts, the green turtle population consequentially boomed — and many seagrass habitats that had appeared pristine were soon trimmed short. The question arose, What had been the natural state of the ecosystem before over-hunting of turtles? “Seagrass pastures and green turtles co-evolved, so when humans reduced their numbers to 3–5 percent of what they had been, the meadows expanded, but there is now some alarm from those who think

Alexandra Gulick

ACCSTR assistant and UF alumna Ashley Meade ’17 measures seagrass blade parameters at Buck Island Reef National Monument in the Virgin Islands.

“ O NE REALLY NICE PART ABOUT BEING AT UF IS THE DIVERSITY OF DISCIPLINES THAT ARE HERE, WE REALLY TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THAT IN TERMS OF COLLABORATING WITH COLLEAGUES IN THE MEDICAL SCHOOL OR THE VET SCHOOL, COASTAL ENGINEERING, WILDLIFE, THE LAW SCHOOL.”

UF Library – Archives

“ The green turtle has always been Archie’s main focus, and mine as well.”

— Karen Bjorndal

Kristen Hart, USGS Research Ecologist (NMFS Permit #16146)

Alexandra Gulick holds a juvenile green turtle that has been tagged as a part of a long-term monitoring project conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey and National Park Service at Buck Island Reef National Monument.

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Adobe Stock

Carr’s other favorite turtle was the loggerhead, and he was particularly intrigued by what he called “the lost year.”

Carr was most interested in the green turtle and the loggerhead, shown here. It is classified as a vulnerable species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

they’re destroying the pastures,” says Bjorndal. “Our graduate students are examining whether it’s an illusion that the ecosystems are being destroyed.”

PhD candidate ALEXANDRA GULICK is evaluating the productivity of turtle-grazed seagrass “meadows” and how seagrass ecology may influence green turtle grazing behavior. “I feel incredibly fortunate to be learning from such a collaborative and inspiring group of scientists,” she says. “The ACCSTR plays an invaluable role in providing the research and outreach necessary to bridge the gap between the public, policy, and the goals of sea turtle conservation.”

Carr’s other favorite turtle was the loggerhead, and he was particularly intrigued by what he called “the lost year.”

Loggerhead hatchlings depart beaches along the Atlantic coast and head out for the sea, but research had been unable to determine where they went and what they did afterward.

While Bjorndal picked up Carr’s green turtle track, Bolten focused on this mystery. His research has shown that the lost year is actually more of a lost decade; during their first 10 years of life, loggerheads are entirely oceanic. During this life stage, they are vulnerable to longline fishing, which standardly used a J-shaped hook that fatally ensnared turtles.

Bolten sought a solution for this problem and found potential in a circle-shaped hook. “I would go to meetings and use

a nylon stocking to demonstrate that circle hooks can be removed,” he says. “But then we got a high shark bycatch rate with this type of hook. We can’t prevent harm to turtles at the expense of other animals.”

By tracking life cycle activities of turtles, ACCSTR can produce a better solution: scheduling commercial fishing activity and restricting equipment according to when and where vulnerable species are in a particular geographic zone. “Of course, being international waters, this approach requires a certain political will,” says Bolten.

If Carr’s legacy is any indication, efforts for ocean health and sea turtle conservation are increasing. “His writings were what spurred interests around the world,” says Bjorndal. Gulick adds, “As an aspiring scientist, I’m excited to contribute to a legacy of work that has been successful in garnering support from so many, all of whom want to see sea turtles fulfill their ecological roles once again.”

Bjorndal recalls something French marine biologist Jacques Fretey once said to her about sea turtle scientists, “We are all Archie’s children.” Both his seminal work and his big personality enthralled and inspired new generations of marine biologists and herpetologists. “That’s a feeling that persists so many years after his passing amongst sea turtle biologists around the world,” says Bjorndal. “We still honor and love him. That’s why his birthday [June 16] is International Sea Turtle Day.” q YTORI — SPRING 2018 | 33

Faculty Profile

JACK DAVIS, HISTORY Telling America’s Stories

By Gigi Marino

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Gigi Marino

“Academics don’t usually publish books that get national attention — you hope, but don’t dare expect it,” says Jack Emerson Davis, UF professor of environmental history and sustainability studies. “I hoped for book reviews in The New York Times.”

The Gulf — The Making of an American Sea, Davis’ latest book, exceeded his expectations. Not only did it get reviewed in The New York Times, but it also made the cover of The New York Times Book Review, saying, “In Davis’s hands, the story reads like a watery version of the history of the American West. Both places saw Spanish incursions from the south, mutual incomprehension in the meeting of Europeans and aboriginals, waves of disease that devastated the natives and a relentless quest by the newcomers for the raw materials of empire. There were scoundrels and hucksters, booms and busts, senseless killing in sublime landscapes and a tragic belief in the inexhaustible bounty of nature.”

In addition, The Gulf won the Kirkus Prize, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, was a New York Times Notable Book, and made a number of other “best of” lists in national publications. (See book review on p. 42.)

The Gulf is Davis’ eighth book. Two of his books focus on race relations and civil rights. When Davis was working on his PhD at Brandeis University in the early 1990s, he vacillated between specializing in environmental history or race relations. Both fields interested him, but environmental history was in its nascent stage. “I decided strategically to put myself on the market as a race relations historian who could do environmental history,” he says.

As it turned out, Davis’ first job was at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg. “I was the first environmental historian they hired,” says Davis. “And I ended up in Pinellas County, where I grew up.” Davis then taught at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he directed the Environmental Studies Program before coming to UF in 2003 — where he also was the first environmental historian the university hired.

Davis is a committed academic who chose to publish with a trade press because he believed The Gulf was an important book that should have a readership outside of the academy.

“This book is about America and its relationship with its sea,” he says. “I was very conscious about bringing in historical figures from the Northeast, Midwest, even the British

At press time, we learned The Gulf won the Pulitzer Prize in History!

Isles, to show how Americans, and not just Gulf siders, are a part of the Gulf of Mexico history, how the Gulf of Mexico was, as nature was, a historical agent that shaped the lives of people who not just dwelled beside its waters but people from other parts of the country.”

When Davis first conceived of The Gulf, the Deepwater Horizon accident that dumped 130 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico had not yet happened. That Davis was writing a history of the Gulf around the same time that the largest oil spill in history was having a profoundly deleterious effect on his subject was coincidental, and it gave him a focus not to be about the spill, which he says, “seemed to rob the Gulf of Mexico of its true identity, and I wanted to restore it, to show people that the Gulf is more than an oil spill, more than a sun beach. It’s got a rich, natural history connected to Americans, and it’s not integrated into the larger American historical narrative. That’s a wrong I wanted to correct.”

Davis’ next book is Bird of Paradox — How the Bald Eagle Saved the Soul of America, a natural and cultural history of the bald eagle. Says Davis, “I want to flesh out the connection between nature and national identity.”

CON N ECT

Student Profile

OLIVIA ALLEN ’19 Independent and Intrepid

By Gigi Marino OLIVIA ALLEN ’19 always knew she would major in psychology, an area of study that fascinated her. During her sophomore year at UF, she was looking for classes to complement psychology when she discovered Skeleton Keys: Introduction to Forensic Anthropology, a class she loved and loved even more when Professor Steven Brandt visited and talked about a study-abroad opportunity at UF’s archeological dig site in Ethiopia. “His photos were beautiful,” says Allen. “The living conditions weren’t going to be that great, but the trip was going to be a life-changing experience. It spoke to me in a weird way.”

Photo provided by Olivia Allen

“ THE CHOICES I MAKE ARE MY OWN. I’VE COME TO APPRECIATE THE VALUE OF MY EDUCATION EVEN MORE, AND I CAN SEE MY END GOAL.” Allen wasn’t sure that she could afford the trip — she is putting herself through college — but when she found out that it was “decently priced,” she signed up. “The only problem was that I’d never been out of the country before,” she says.

“In fact, I haven’t even traveled to that many states.”

Nonetheless, at the beginning of Spring semester 2017, Allen got a passport, packed work clothes and sensible shoes, and joined nine other students for what indeed was a life-changing experience. “I was completely shocked by Ethiopia,” says Allen, “the sounds, the smells, the food.

I couldn’t understand a word of Amharic. The language barrier was terrifying, but in an interesting way.” The students worked at the dig, laboriously sifting through dirt, cleaning any ancient stone tools or bits of bone they found, and carefully logging their daily activity and findings.

“We worked from 9 to 4 every day during the week and sometimes on Saturdays,” Allen says. “Each day, we would wake up and hike to the site. I never hiked before.

I never climbed a mountain. I never worked so hard in my entire life.” The first time she hiked to the site, Allen says she complained about it. “The kids here hike three miles to school every day,” she says. “I realized the things we complain about are ridiculous. The poverty in Ethiopia is difficult to experience.”

When the UF team was ready to return to the States, they left the dig in Wolaita Sodo and spent a week in the capital, Addis Ababa. “We had running water and clean sheets,” she says. “We realized that we took everything for granted. The people there live with less than basic necessities.”

Allen says that after Ethiopia, she feels she can do anything. A perfectionist who used to cry when she didn’t get a good grade in middle school, she says, “I was always so afraid of failure. Ethiopia changed that for me. I also used to think everything was set in stone, but then I traveled and realized I could be happy in other ways. There are many doors I never considered before opened to me.”

Allen is now a dual major in psychology and anthropology, with a career goal set on counseling psychology. She also now volunteers as a study-abroad peer adviser and as a member of She’s the First, an organization that promotes women’s education in developing countries, as well as being a member of Chi Omega. In addition, she has an academic dispensation to work 30 hours a week. “My parents didn’t go to college,” she says. “They love me, but I support myself. I don’t resent it. The choices I make are my own. I’ve come to appreciate the value of my education even more, and I can see my end goal.”

After a semester in Ethiopia, Olivia Allen added anthropology as a second major.

YTORI — SPRING 2018 | 35

Personal Essay

HIS BRIEF HISTORY IN TIME The world knew Stephen Hawking as a genius whose imagination and determination transcended his physical abilities. UF Professor of Physics Bernard Whiting knew him as a friend.

By Bernard Whiting

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time of the Big Bang — in which struggles he has been engaged for almost 40 years. Outside science, he is known for his popular book, A Brief History of Time, which has sold widely and appeared in dozens of languages. In reality, while some have tried to compare him to Newton and Einstein, his contributions are unique to his distinct personality. Most notably, and publicly evident, he avoided the fatal grip of ALS for well over half a century while pondering the most difficult problems challenging many of the best minds in science.

I first met Stephen Hawking in 1977 when I went to Cambridge to join my wife, Mary, who was pursuing graduate studies there. I had already been accepted into the General Relativity group but was having difficulty completing my PhD thesis for Melbourne University while Mary was on the other side of the world. Hawking arranged for me to share an office with his then-postdoc, Don Page, and welcomed me as part of the group. Thus, by the time I eventually finished my thesis, I was very familiar with the scientific interests in Cambridge

Ian Berry/Magnum Photos

Stephen Hawking’s passing will become a landmark in the history of science, though I suspect each of us may remember him for a different reason. He is known by hard-core relativists for his singularity theorems with Roger Penrose from the late ’60s and early ’70s. He is known inside and outside physics for his fundamental discoveries about the quantum, mechanically induced evaporation of black holes from the mid ’70s, and he is known by quantum cosmologists for his “no-boundary” proposal with James Hartle for the beginning of the universe. And, by all of us, he is known for his struggles with the quantum nature of the early universe since the

Ian Berry/Magnum Photos

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and had already met a number of distinguished visitors — visitors who were beating a steady path to the Cambridge group, just to see Stephen.

As soon as my PhD was finished, I immediately began traveling with Stephen to meetings. He would often take two colleagues and perhaps another assistant to help with the physical attention he needed, to interpret for those he met, and to translate his personally delivered talks for the general audience. At that time, Stephen was sought out extensively, and he would enjoy the many interactions with other famous colleagues, be they from Russia, the United States, or a country in Europe.

What few people may realize from the mechanical voice which has become his trademark, is that Stephen had a lively sense of humor, which was infectious. Several of his graduate students once put a mathematician on a train wearing a ruler tied to his jacket button hole, until he could solve the topological problem that would elucidate its easy removal.

Stephen was also quite adventurous, interested in the vista from atop ruins of the ancient walls in Rome, for example, or the view beyond a distant verdant hill in a damp Welsh atmosphere. When traveling, Stephen was always keen to find gifts and presents to take home to his family and would

Stephen Hawking in Cambridge in 1986.

Stephen Hawking with a colleague in Hawking’s Cambridge office in 1977.

venture into European street markets or American malls in their pursuit.

In total, I was in the General Relativity group with Stephen Hawking from 1977 to 1983, and after that I assisted him at various meetings until at least 1985 (when he tragically lost his voice due to a tracheotomy). My work in Cambridge, and for nearly a decade after, focused on Hawking’s theory about the properties of black holes and, as his research associate, I worked closely with one of his graduate students. I also traveled with him extensively to meetings, both within the UK and internationally, since I was well able to understand his voice — which, to many, seemed indecipherable — and to present his talks with him.

I learned a great deal from Stephen, especially about the nature of science. I also learned from him about how to deal with other scientists, and with bureaucrats, from the university up. But one of the most valuable things he did for me was give me freedom. While the necessity of this freedom seems intuitively obvious to great scientists, it is not always understood by university administrators. In my case, while ostensibly working on problems of quantum fields in curved spacetimes, it was the freedom to pursue an interest in the stability of rotating Kerr black holes. The nature of science is that this problem took a long time to attract the attention YTORI — SPRING 2018 | 37

have had one student or another back working on problems in which Hawking also shared an interest. In particular, the end state of the Hawking evaporation process — and whether or not a black hole will vanish — remains an open problem that still perplexes many, and for me, is unfinished business.

The death of Stephen Hawking gives us an opportunity to reflect on his contributions to the world, some of which are not directly scientific. What are seen as his persistence and bravery in the face of adversity, qualities that are necessary in any great achiever, were demonstrated to an exemplary level in Stephen, and have been a source of lasting inspiration, probably to millions in all walks of life. His strong stance on the public support of science sometimes led him to fall foul of the political powers. Others have mentioned his direct political activism, particularly for those with disabilities. I think that overall, Stephen will pass into history as a sort of legend: his remarkable computing powers appeal even to those who do not particularly understand any of the problems he was tackling. Stephen was a clear example of mind acting over matter, and that has

Stephen Hawking playing chess with his son Robert while his daughter, Lucy, reads. Cambridge, 1977

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Ian Berry/Magnum Photos

and interest it currently has and helps explain why I moved on to other problems for several decades. Consequently, I finally had the privilege, during a small meeting in Texas, of presenting to Stephen new results in the mathematics of self-gravity we had been using on quantum fields in curved spacetimes several decades earlier.

After I came to the University of Florida in 1989, my scientific path began to slowly diverge from Stephen’s for a time.

However, during an exchange year in Utrecht in 1992–3, I had the good fortune to pursue a problem on the formation and evaporation of black holes with Gerard ’t Hooft, who also has a strong interest in what has become known as the information paradox, prompted by Stephen’s early proclamations about mixed quantum states and information loss. I have since had one graduate student complete a thesis on the dynamics of black hole evaporation, aka “Hawking Radiation.” Then, beginning in 2010, Stephen invited me to a number of meetings he was hosting, with former close colleagues, at “Cook’s Branch” in Texas. In 2015, he also invited me to a meeting on Hawking Radiation held by Nordita in Stockholm. Since that time, I

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of humor. The delay while he programmed his mechanical voice to respond was not one we would otherwise associate with Stephen, and his responses sometimes lost something — such as a humorous inflection — in the translation. In all, while his scientific contributions will be remembered by many, his unfailing sense of humor will remain with those of us who knew him until our own dying days.

I can’t help but finish with the observation that my current involvement in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration focuses on the detection of the stochastic gravitational wave background from the Big Bang, a signal that Stephen’s work on the quantum physics of the early universe has helped to motivate me to detect. It is not yet within range of being detected, in contrast to the several detections of binary black hole mergers that have now occurred. Precise measurement of the final black hole’s properties through its quasi normal dissipation is something Stephen was eager to see — as a confirmation of General Relativity. His observation that black holes should radiate away is well beyond detection at present and drives future experiments — and dreams. q

Bernard Whiting

Stephen Hawking going home in his mechanized wheelchair through the Cambridge grounds. 1986.

appealed to many just as living the high life had appealed to Stephen.

My experience with Hawking was not just scientific. Mary and I knew his family well, to the extent that we would vacation with them, and my wife would help his wife, Jane, with their daughter, and later their younger son, before our first child was born in Cambridge. In fact, Jane and their daughter stayed with Mary and our daughter while I was in Rome at an international meeting with Stephen in June, 1985, shortly before his fateful visit to Switzerland during which he fell gravely ill with pneumonia and required emergency medical intervention that resulted in his tracheotomy. For many of us who knew him, the greatest loss at that time was the spontaneity in his lively sense

Bernard Whiting earned his BSc and PhD from Melbourne University, with postdocs in Cambridge, England; Meudon, France; Chapel Hill, N.C.; and Gainesville, Fla. He has been a faculty member at UF since 1990. His scientific interests include analysis of quantum fields in curved spacetimes, classical Kerr black hole stability, the gravitational self-force problem, and the detection of a stochastic background of gravitational waves by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.

L to R, Bernard Whiting, Lucette Carter (deceased), and Brandon Carter, who collaborated with Hawking, at the Carters’ home in Sèvres, outside Paris, France, ca. 1984.

YTORI — SPRING 2018 | 39

Entrepreneurs and Innovators

LEA BLACKWELL ’96 Breast surgical oncologist Lea Blackwell has been treating both women and men with breast cancer since 2008. Wanting to find a way to make their recovery more comfortable, she developed the Blackwell Bra.

By Gigi Marino WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO INVENT THE BLACKWELL BRA?

HAVE YOU RECEIVED A PATENT FOR YOUR INVENTION? In May of 2011, patent attorneys advised me I had a patentable idea. In November of 2011, I applied for a patent for my “post-operative compression bra” and received my first patent in July, 2014. I now have three additional patents. I have two more items, a bra for women after heart and lung surgery that I’m calling the Thoracic Compression Bra and the Drain Apron, to help manage drain bulbs after surgery. I have the trademark on “Blackwell Bra” and one pending for “Dr. Blackwell.”

WHAT MAKES THE BLACKWELL BRA UNIQUE? I was looking for a certain feel on the skin and ordered wickaway nylon and spandex compression fabric from Italy. The bra uses clasps instead of Velcro, which provide adjustability in the front and are easier for the patient to snap closed. It has mesh pockets to accommodate the drains. If patients don’t have drains, they can use the mesh pockets for ice packs. Because the patient is wearing the bra 24 hours a day, it can be hot, which is uncomfortable for the patient, so I added a mesh panel in the back of the bra to ventilate the bra. Additionally, all of the other post-surgical bras 40 | LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES

Jennifer Ziegelmaier Photography

When I did my surgical training, we wrapped patients in an Ace Elastic Bandage. In my fellowship training, we had a surgical compression bra that we instructed the patients to wear for six weeks. When I started my surgical practice in Fort Myers, we used a surgical bra with a front Velcro closure. Every patient complained — it was uncomfortable but more uncomfortable without it. I started wondering if I could make my own bra.

The “Blackwell Bra” is both patented and trademarked.

were designed with a wide band of fabric on the side, which aggravates the incision sites under the arms. The Blackwell Bra’s lower side fabric minimizes interference with the incisions. My accessory product, the Drain Apron, is helpful for patients who have drains, which are cumbersome. The Drain Apron is helpful to accommodate the drains when patients are taking showers. All of the bras are made in bright colors — I feel it’s positive and lifts their spirits. Women tell me that the bra is comfortable, and that they feel protected.

WHAT CHALLENGES WERE THERE IN MAKING THE BRA? It turns out that the bra is one of the more complex items to make in textiles. It’s not easy finding a manufacturer, and I prefer to make them in the U.S. Since 2013, I’ve worked with a seamstress who makes bras for my patients. I’ve given away more than a thousand bras since 2014. Working with the seamstress has helped me to modify the bra to improve the fit and feel. I have a bra designer working with me to facilitate manufacturing and hope to have them ready for sale by the end of 2018.

For more information, go to www.blackwellbra.com

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Alumni Profile

JAMES GRIPPANDO ’80, JD’82 Double Gator calls winning Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction an “unbelievable joy.”

By Kurt Anthony Krug

Monica Hopkins Photography

Author JAMES GRIPPANDO ’80, JD’82 says that winning the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction in 2017 for his novel Gone Again (reviewed in the Fall 2016 issue of Ytori) was the most exciting thing ever to happen to him in his career as an attorney and as a best-selling novelist.

“I am honored and humbled,” says Grippando, who lives in Coral Gables, Fla. “The coolest thing is you get a signed copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. Her old friends came to the ceremony [held at the University of Alabama School of Law in Tuscaloosa], and it’s pretty surreal to get this prize and congratulations from her friends.”

Gone Again tackles the issue of the death penalty and innocence, and in this novel, race. Attorney Jack Swyteck, the protagonist of 14 of Grippando’s 26 novels and a Gator himself, must defend Dylan Reeves, a man on death row wrongfully convicted of murdering teenager Sashi Burgette, whose body was never found.

Grippando’s protagonist, attorney Jack Swyteck, is a Gator.

“Having a character like Jack Swyteck in 14 novels and winning an award based on a Swyteck novel was an unbelievable joy for me,” says Grippando. “I would defy anyone to guess where I stand on capital punishment based on my novels, but people always ask. My view has evolved. In 2015, I was shocked to discover 58 convictions in homicide cases had been overturned and the average length of time a wrongly convicted person served was 14½ years in prison.”

Grippando says he honed his writing skills in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences honors program, led by English professor Sid Homan.

“We wrote a paper a week, and Sid would read them aloud to us,” recalls Grippando. “There’s nothing more painful than hearing and watching someone trip over your own bad sentence. I still edit my own work that way — reading it aloud. It stuck with me.”

Most of Grippando’s novels are set in Florida, and he frequently draws on his experiences from his college days, whether it’s tubing down the Ichetucknee River or observing student protests at Tigert Hall.

His latest novel, A Death in Live Oak, is set at the University of Florida where Jamal Cousin, the president of the preeminent black fraternity, is found hogtied and lynched, hanging above the Suwannee River. This act — inspired by a lynching in Live Oak in the 1940s — sparks a firestorm across the state and the nation, putting Jack in the Atticus Finch-like position of defending an unpopular client in a racially-charged environment.

“Since I’m writing a thriller, the stakes need to be as high as they can be,” says Grippando. “I knew it had to be set at the flagship university in whatever state I based it in. In this case, it was the University of Florida. I’m proud to say that I went to that flagship university.”

The idea for Live Oak percolated in Grippando’s mind for years, but it migrated to the forefront when his son, Ryan, was applying to colleges. Grippando was disturbed by the amount of racially-motivated hate crimes happening on college campuses throughout the country.

“Any writer will tell you the old adage, ‘Write what you know.’ It also means, ‘Write what you worry about,’” he says.

“Jack Swyteck, as a character, had never addressed the issue of racism in America. I like to take on timely subject matters.

I don’t preach. I present the topic as realistically as possible.

I’m happy to say that many people think it’s the best book I’ve written.”

See book review on p. 42. To learn more about Jack Swyteck and Grippando, visit www.jamesgrippando.com.

YTORI — SPRING 2018 | 41

Creative License The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, Jack E. Davis

A Death in Live Oak, James Grippando ’80, JD’82

2018, Liveright

2018, HarperCollins

The Gulf of Mexico is both unusual and important, geologically, ecologically, economically, and historically. UF history professor JACK DAVIS weaves all those together in this brilliant and unprecedented story of the Gulf. He brings in commentary from luminaries such as Ernest Hemingway and Rachel Carson, and most importantly the artist Winslow Homer, whose painting “Shell Heap” provides a compelling throughline and visual metaphor for the book. Davis organizes the book by characteristics of the Gulf, matching each with a historical character. The cast includes ethnologist Frank Hamilton Cushing, explorer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, and fisherman Leonard Destin. Through artfully told stories balanced with scientific and historical detail, Davis proves that the Gulf of Mexico is indeed an American sea. (See profile on p. 34. Late addition: The Gulf won a Pulitzer!)

Rosie Girl, Julie Shepard ’90 2017, G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers UF alumna JULIE SHEPARD’S portrait of a teenage girl forgoes typical coming-of-age poignancy for a compelling dark comedy of a young woman whose ventures into vices and questionable alliances form the shape of her search for her birth mother. Written with biting wit in the first-person perspective of Shepard’s anti-heroine Rosie, who is surrounded by characters in shades of grey, the novel alternates between brisk dialogue, humorous musings by Rosie, and immersive passages of sense memory and introspection. Rosie Girl offers a progressive reveal of each character’s secrets and, ultimately, a resonant portrayal of human longing and fallibility.

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In this decidedly Floridian addition to the Jack Swyteck series, JAMES GRIPPANDO ’80, JD’82 sends his defense-attorney hero on a timely journey through racial tensions in central Florida, tying a historical nonfiction prologue about the 1944 lynching of 15-year-old Willie James Howard to his deftly labyrinthine legal fiction novel. Packed with dry wit and flippant descriptions of Florida life and culture, Grippando effectively broaches uncomfortable themes with legal prowess and the immense personality of his hero.

(See profile on p. 41.)

Dante, Columbus and the Prophetic Tradition: Spiritual Imperialism in the Italian Imagination, Mary Alexandra Watt 2017, Routledge MARY WATT, UF professor of Italian studies and associate dean of UF’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, brings together discussions of Christian apocalyptic dogma, Dante’s religious imagination, and imperialist ethos to explore the complicated character and dubious claims of Christopher Columbus. Drawing upon Columbus’ and his contemporaries’ various writings, Watt shows how perceptions of reality in Columbus’ era were inextricably tied to prevailing religious and pre-scientific ideology, and Columbus’ ambition an extension thereof. She also delves into historico-literary analysis of Dante’s formative role in contemporary conceptions of heaven and hell. She concludes by examining the incorporation of the Columbus character into his own epic, written by Tommaso Stigliani to affirm Italian imperialism.

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An African American and Latinx History of the United States, Paul Ortiz 2018, G.P. Beacon Press PAUL ORTIZ, UF history professor and director of UF’s Samuel Proctor Oral History Program (see article on p. 18), gives a sweeping and peoplefirst overview of the United States from the abolitionist era to the election of Barack Obama, contextualized in the voices and activities of African American and Latinx leaders. Each page is packed with quotes from primary materials, creating a 189-page volume of dialogue that Ortiz uses not only for his driving argument that American exceptionalism is a myth, but also to demonstrate that history itself is socially constructed. In the vein of Howard Zinn, Ortiz offers a history of America’s civil rights that emphasizes minority voices and provides a roadmap for further progress.

Dodgers Bill Beverly MFA’91 2016, Broadway Books While there really is no such thing as an American diaspora, the citizenry cannot deny what this great American experiment has birthed — a nation of independents and dependents, haves and have-nots, meritocracy and democracy. In BILL BEVERLY’S breakout novel, Dodgers, an L.A. born and bred character named East, whose day job is standing guard for a crack house, cannot look beyond the killing of an innocent girl from Jackson, Miss. So, when he’s called to be part of a crew to kill a judge in Wisconsin, East goes east without question — wearing a fan jersey of the L.A Dodgers, a team that abandoned New York for L.A, 60 years ago. On one level, Beverly has constructed a compelling and gritty crime novel. But on another, Dodgers hits hard, making the reader question intentionality, destiny, and American reality — mercenary Iowa gun runners in the heartland, a fairminded Ohio mayor who’s made his money on paintball wars,

and East, the 16-year-old who discovers himself in the fault line of America, between tyranny and trust, race and reason.

Goodbye, Vitamin: A Novel Rachel Khong MFA’11 2017, Henry Holt and Co. In brief vignettes of sparse and lucid prose, RACHEL KHONG tells the story of a family whose holiday season is marred by worsening dementia in its patriarch. Daughter Ruth, in whose voice the novel poignantly dips into relatable musings on American life while unveiling its protagonist’s fierce heartbreak over the loss of her engagement, attempts to make sense of the situation. Khong’s immersive and lightly humorous style does not detract from the Big Questions of identity and fate facing her characters.

China in the Mix: Cinema, Sound, and Popular Culture in the Age of Globalization Ying Xiao 2017, University Press of Mississippi As the title suggests, YING XIAO, UF assistant professor of Chinese film and media, explores the dualities among visuals and sound, China and Hollywood, and globalism and the state in her historical critique of post-socialist Chinese film. Noting that most film studies focus on visual content, Xiao unpacks the auditory content, including a multitude of voices and languages, various styles of music, and dialogue, and contextualizes it in China’s sociocultural milieu from the 1980s to present. In examining China’s paradigms, politics, and sense of personhood as well, Xiao expands her work into what she calls “an interdisciplinary cultural studies project.”

Each issue of Ytori will cover creative works by faculty and alumni. Please submit suggestions to gigimarino@ufl.edu.

YTORI — SPRING 2018 | 43

The

SECRETS of SPANISH FLORIDA

Forget what you learned in history class and imagine, for a moment, that the founding of the United States does not begin with Jamestown Colony or the Pilgrims.

O

BY BARBARA DRAKE

ur nation’s first permanent settlers are not the British pioneers who build a fort on the St. James River in 1607 but, rather, a melting pot of Spanish, German, French, English, and African homesteaders who stake their claim more than 40 years earlier — on Sept. 8, 1565 — on Florida’s turbulent Atlantic coast. Their leader, an intrepid Spanish admiral and fervent Catholic, names the new colony after a North African saint, befriends the local indigenous people, and celebrates the first mass in the Americas. To top things off, the grateful admiral orders that a Thanksgiving meal of salted pork and garbanzo beans

44 | LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES

be prepared for everyone, colonists and natives alike — all more than half a century before the Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock.

Sounds a bit far-fetched. Except it’s not: It’s the actual, evidence-based history of the founding of San Agustín (St. Augustine), Fla., as painstakingly researched by experts from the University of Florida and other leading institutions. And this research is at the heart of an engrossing new documentary, The Secrets of Spanish Florida, which first aired on PBS in December 2017. Dedicated to the memory of renowned Florida historian, UF’s Michael Gannon (1927– 2017), the two-hour film tells the story of America’s past “that never made it into textbooks” and is sparking new discussion about

The First Thanksgiving, St. Augustine, 1565, by Michael Rosato, courtesy Florida Museum of Natural History

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the cultural, racial, and religious diversity that has been at the heart of the American experience for nearly 500 years.

Our nation’s history “is multicultural from day one,” says University of Central Florida historian Rosalyn Howard, pointing to early St. Augustine. “If we took that as a beginning, I think we would have a very different picture of the United States.”

The Secrets of Spanish Florida gets down and dirty with history as it follows archeologists, marine scientists, and historians on a quest to uncover this forgotten side of America’s origins. As the camera pans in on the Fountain of Youth Archeological Park, just north of St. Augustine, we see professor Kathleen Deagan and a team of UF archeologists unearthing artifacts that have lain buried for more than four hundred years: musket balls, uniform buttons, and orangeand-blue glass beads. To the uninitiated, these mundane objects may not seem like treasures, but to Deagan, one of the nation’s leading Spanish colonial archeologists, their long-awaited discovery is the researcher’s equivalent of a “smoking gun”: tantalizing evidence of where Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (1519–74) likely first settled with his colonists when they came ashore in 1565.

“It’s the first place in the United States that Europeans came and stayed,” says Deagan, underlining the site’s significance.

And there is evidence of the children who came with these first settlers. Researchers found a figa amulet, an object in the shape of a clenched fist, which Spanish mothers hung around their babies’ necks to ward off the evil eye. “We just couldn’t help imagining this was associated with Martín de Argüelles, the first European child born in what is now the United States,” says Deagan.

Records from 16th-century Saint Augustine reveal another astonishing fact: About a quarter of marriages then were between Spaniards and native Americans.

In fact, for 234 years, people of different races, ethnicities, and religions lived side by side in relative peace in this city.

Elsewhere in St. Augustine, UF researchers have discovered the science behind

the enduring power of the Castillo de San Marcos, the vast seaward-looking fortress built to ward off British raiders like Sir Francis Drake. How was it able to withstand enemy bombardments of more than fifty days when other forts blew to bits? Its walls were made of coquina, a soft limestone of broken shells, which absorbed the cannonballs’ impact rather than shattered. Ghatu Subhash, the UF researcher in material sciences who solved this mystery, dispels any illusions viewers might have of the original builders’ brilliance in choosing this new technology: “They just got lucky,” Subhash says with a smile.

In addition to showcasing the forensic and analytical work of these and other UF experts such as historians Jack Davis, Eugene Lyon, Jane Landers, and James Cusick, The Secrets of Spanish Florida features vivid reenactments of little-known events in Spanish Florida history. We see African slaves from British-owned plantations escape on a “reverse” Underground Railroad that takes them south to Spanish Florida, where they are given freedom in exchange for allegiance to the Spanish Crown and the Catholic faith.

We applaud as former slave Francisco Menéndez leads his people to found the first free black colony in the United States in 1738, nearly 125 years before the Emancipation Proclamation. And there is the poignant scene of the entire population of St. Augustine ­— more than 3,000 people — abandoning their city to set sail for Havana, Cuba, a year after Spain cedes La Florida to the British in 1763.

Most of these events have been written out of the official historical narrative of our country.

Not surprisingly, The Secrets of Spanish Florida has generated considerable buzz. The documentary reached more than 3.7 million viewers when it aired on Dec. 26, 2017 and has generated more than 60,000 digital streams on the PBS website. Viewer comments attest to the program’s power to move and to challenge our notions of how our nation began: “It’s humbling to realize the extent to which the victors’ [England’s] version of history has kept the full story from us and interfered with our ability to learn from that past,” writes a fan from Massachusetts. Elsewhere, commenters spar about events left out of the film and possible errors or misinterpretations of facts.

But such heated reactions are to be expected when we are asked to reconsider our long-cherished stories of national identity, including that holy of holies, the origins of Turkey Day. A few years ago, UF historian Michael Gannon drew fire when he called Pedro Menéndez’s Sept. 8, 1565, feast “the true first Thanksgiving.” In the beginning of The Secrets of Spanish Florida, he explains what happened next: “There was a guy who called me from WBZ, in Boston. He said, ‘While I’m talking, do you realize there is an emergency meeting of selectmen at Plymouth to contend with this new information that there were Spaniards in Florida before there were Englishmen in Massachusetts?’ And then he said, ‘Well, you know how you’ve become known up here in New England?’ I said no. He said, ‘The Grinch Who Stole Thanksgiving.’” q YTORI — SPRING 2018 | 45

Donor Profile

JOHN WELSH ’75 A restauranteur with a Texassized love for Russian gives back to Languages, Literatures, and Cultures.

By Gigi Marino

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Provided by John Welsh ’75

The son of a physician, JOHN WELSH ’75 began his UF career in the pre-med track and worked in an immunology lab. The elder Dr. Welsh was happy. The director of the immunology department was happy. Welsh himself, however, was not. “I hated it,” he says. Three years later, the young Welsh went to his father and said, “Dad, this is just not my thing,” a sentiment he also communicated to the immunology director.

“John, you’re a hard worker, you have a positive outlook, always charging, business-oriented,” the director told Welsh.

“Maybe medicine isn’t for you. You should be in business.’”

Welsh was relieved he did not have to follow in his father’s footsteps, but he had spent three years taking science classes. It seemed a bit late in the game to change his major.

An advisor looked over his coursework and told him the only thing he was missing was a foreign language. He says. “It was the beginning of the cold war, and I thought Russian might be fun.” Heck, why not?

Welsh credits Professor E.C. Barksdale with helping him get the necessary hours to graduate. He also started working with a UF ornithologist, who needed help translating papers from a Russian colleague, and discovered that all those science classes paid off after all. Armed with a major in Russian and a minor in physical sciences, he headed to Manhattan hoping to get a job at the United Nations. He learned you need a PhD to translate at the UN and instead worked at a hotel laundry with Polish immigrants, who could understand his Russian.

He soon left NYC and went west, ending up in Dallas in 1976. He took a job at the Railhead Restaurant and, within six months, informed the owners that he would like to go into management. Railhead was purchased by Victoria Station, which gave Railhead’s owners an opportunity to pursue their own concept restaurant: Cheddar’s Casual Cafe. As an operational founder, Welsh joined Aubrey Good and Doug Rogers to open the first Cheddar’s in Arlington, Texas. Today, there are 171 Cheddar’s in the U.S. Welsh is a franchisee with two stores and started another concept restaurant: Fish Daddy’s.

When he opened his first franchise in 2000, his wife, Sydney, stepped in to “help out” for 30 days. Eighteen years

John ’75 and Sydney Welsh are no strangers to 12-hour days and 7-day weeks.

later, she’s still helping out. They are first to tell you that being restaurant owners takes resilience, grit, and determination.

At the first location, they worked 12-hour days for nine months straight. When they finally got one day off, half way to a Houston respite, the back office’s shelving collapsed, rendering all of the computers useless. Making a bee line back to the restaurant, Syd said, “Nice day off, honey!”

When they opened their second Cheddar’s in Lufkin, Texas, they had a constant turnover in staff. “Your No. 2 store is usually make it or break it for small companies,” says Welsh. John visited weekly, and Sydney drove five hours back and forth twice a week for four years until the management and staffing were stable. They began remodeling a building to start their first Fish Daddy’s. Careless painters left rags in cans next to a wooden column — four months of hard work and hundreds of thousands of dollars went up in flame. John and Sydney couldn’t start reconstruction on it for a year. In the long run, all three restaurants prevailed.

The Welshes required their three adult children to work in management for a year in one of their restaurants. “We wanted them to understand where the money comes from,” says Welsh. The couple believes in both self-reliance and giving people a chance. This last year, they endowed a scholarship to Languages, Literatures, and Cultures for one student a year — “an individual like me,” says Welsh, “someone in Liberal Arts and Sciences who doesn’t know exactly what they want to do yet.” He credits the college with giving him a flexible concept of life, and not just because of “the immunologist who saw a businessman in me,” Welsh says. “Working through college, combined with having a broad landscape in the humanities, helped form my personality. Your personality gets shaped those four years.”

GO BEYOND REQUIREMENTS GO BEYOND THE CLASSROOM GO BEYOND THE ORDINARY BEYOND120 is a new college initiative to engage our students early in their college careers to promote career readiness and professional development.

Alumni play a vital role in the success of BEYOND120!

EXAMPLES OF WAYS YOU CAN BE INVOLVED → Provide an internship, externship, or shadow experience → Become an alumni mentor → Engage with students on campus → Develop career-readiness lectures, workshops, or symposia

YOU ALSO CAN MAKE A GIFT TO SUPPORT PROGRAM AREAS, SUCH AS → International Exchange Programs and Study Abroad Programs → Undergraduate Research → Skill Gaps – Speaking, Writing, Numerical Literacy, Technical Literacy → Liberal Arts and Sciences Career Communities

For more information on how you can help, contact the Office of Advancement at 352-294-1971 or alumni@clas.ufl.edu.

To learn more about BEYOND120, visit advancement.clas.ufl.edu/beyond120.

Kiss-Met

Rachel Herman

Joan and Ronnie Levin participated in a Space Program research project in 1961 and discovered they practically had the same brain. They’ve been together ever since.

ONE BIG, HAPPY, GATOR FAMILY! Joan Levin ’63, English and Chemistry Ronnie Levin, Pre-dental Ronnie and I met in chemistry class — he was a pre-dent student, and I was majoring in chemistry at the time. One day during our sophomore year, I received a letter from the College of Medicine. They were doing some kind of research for the Space Program, and they asked me to volunteer to have an EEG. I had no idea why I had received this request and called Ronnie to tell him about it. He also had received the same letter. So, we made our appointments together. When we arrived, we asked the technician why the two of us were asked to volunteer for EEGs. We were told that the year before, a survey was given to our freshman chemistry class. They contacted the members of that particular class because it was one of the largest lecture classes on campus, and they wanted a significant sample for their research. It turned out that Ronnie and I 48 | LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES

had the exact same answers on the questionnaire, and they were interested to know if our brain waves also would be comparable. After the test, we were told that the results were so similar that we could have been the same person!

That’s when I figured out that we were meant to be.

My fondest academic memory is passing quant class [quantitative chemical analysis], and my fondest social memories are the parties and the bands that performed at the TEP house, Ronnie’s fraternity. My most frightening memories happened during my internship at Coral Gables High School — exactly during the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I graduated in May, 1963. Our wedding was June of 1963 at the Diplomat Country Club in Hollywood, Fla. Ronnie left UF after his junior year and went to the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery and graduated in 1966.

We have three married children, two of whom attended the University of Florida, DINA LEVIN FETNER ’91, who also attended dental school at UF, and RISA LEVIN HERMAN ’88.

All three of our children married Gators. We have five grandchildren at the University of Florida — NOAH LEVIN ’18, JENNA LEVIN ’20, JAKE FETNER ’20, MATTHEW HERMAN ’20, and RACHEL HERMAN, who is in her second year of veterinary school. We are one big happy Gator family!

CON N ECT

Laurels and Kudos Ȫ H istory professor JACK DAVIS won the Pulitzer Prize in History for his book The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea (see profile of Davis on p. 34).

Ȫ B iology major AARON SANDOVAL ’20 has been awarded a Goldwater Fellowship for the 2018–19 year. Math major ANDREW SACK ’19 received an honorable mention.

Ȫ T he University of Florida is one of only five institutions to receive the 2018 Senator Paul Simon Award for Comprehensive Internationalization, celebrating initiatives such as the UF International Center’s Learning without Borders. Political science professor LEONARDO VILLALÓN is dean of the UF International Center.

Ȫ B raman Professor of Holocaust Studies NORMAN GODA was awarded a faculty fellowship from the Deutsche Akademischer Austauschdienst to partially fund research for his book on the Klaus Barbie trial.

Ȫ P sychology professor DOROTHY ESPELAGE was elected to the National Academy of Education. Ȫ P rofessors of philosophy JAIME AHLBERG and JENNIFER ROTHSCHILD have each received grant funding from the Center for Ethics and Education — $30,000 and $40,000 respectively.

Ȫ S tatistics professor MALAY GHOSH received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Indian Statistical Association. Ȫ U F’S LITIGATORS, the Mock Trial team, for the first time qualified to take two teams to Nationals. Ȫ T OM BIANCHI was named a Fellow of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography.

Fieldwork

Photo provided by Olivia Allen

Maira Irgaray Castro

Robert Walker, professor of Latin Studies and geography, works with an indigenous tribe to fight hydropower development of Amazonia’s Tapajós Valley. Shown here, Munduruku women warriors are ready to defend their home. This photo was taken by graduate student MAIRA IRIGARAY CASTRO for Amazon Watch. Walker’s work was featured as the cover story of the March/April issue of Environment magazine.

The study abroad program UF in Ethiopia, led by anthropology professor Steven Brandt, allows students to participate in an ongoing archaeological excavation at Mochena Borago, a large rock shelter in the southwestern Ethiopian highlands containing deposits spanning more than 50,000 years. Shown here, OLIVIA ALLEN ’19 carefully sifts through the soil looking for artifacts. (See her profile on p. 35.)

YTORI — SPRING 2018 | 49

YOU ARE USING THAT WORD ALL WRONG! A Primer from Professor Victoria Pagan

The name Ytori means alligator in the language of the Timucua, the native inhabitants of north central and northeastern Florida.

SPRING 2018 | VOL. 3, ISSUE 4 Ytori is published twice a year in the Fall and Spring by the University of Florida College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

STAFF Dean: David E. Richardson Assistant VP of Development and Alumni Affairs: Ryan Marsh Editor-in-Chief: Gigi Marino Associate Editor: Rachel Wayne Proofreaders: Bruce Mastron, Kaitlin Sammon ’18 Interns: Yankel Amarante ’19 Director of Graphic Design: Scott Harper © 2018 by the University of Florida College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or duplicated without prior permission of the editor.

Ytori University of Florida College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean’s Office, 2014 Turlington Hall PO Box 117300 | Gainesville FL 32611 Printed by Progress Printing, an FSC-certified printer in Willow Springs, N.C.

Website: publications.clas.ufl.edu Facebook: facebook.com/UF.clas Twitter: UF_CLAS Instagram: UF_CLAS AN EQUAL ACCESS/EQUAL OPPORTUNITY UNIVERSITY We love letters! Love or hate something you read?

Have a story idea? Let us know. Email editor@clas.ufl.edu, or write us at the address noted above.

Adobe

In English, we slap an “s” on nearly any noun and boom, there’s more than one. But what about those pesky nouns derived from Latin or Greek? “Alumni,” I’m looking at you.

One alumnus is second declension masculine, so his plural is “alumni.” One alumna is first declension feminine, and her plural is “alumnae.” If, however, we are referring to the entirety of the Gator Nation, then we use the masculine plural, “alumni.” This is used so commonly, that people tend to think that any Latin — or Greek — noun must form its plural by changing the suffix to “-i.”

Not so. That suffix is reserved for the second declension masculines. English uses a fair number of second declension neuter nouns. Everyone knows that science provides us with data, which almost always comes to us in the plural, since one piece of evidence, a datum, is unreliable. But did you know that you vote on a referendum because it’s only one item on the ballot? If your local politicians are especially busy, they might propose several referenda, because they have lots of items on their agenda, the many things that need to be done.

Nouns of Greek origin follow a different pattern altogether. For example, a doctoral candidate manages to write one thesis, but we professors grade all the theses. And while many superheroes have only one nemesis, a group of supervillains would be a gathering of nemeses.

If you think you are confused, try being an octopus. Not only must he keep track of four pairs of shoes, he’s also got to contend with three different plurals. Properly speaking, his friends are octopodes, a Greek plural.

But because the octopus looks like an Latin noun, many alumni assume that octopi is the correct plural. To avoid the confusion, a good American will do what is simple and expedient, and just add an “s.” So don’t be offended if you see a bunch of octopuses at the zoo. They are just trying to get along.

For more information about Latin and Greek languages and etymologies, visit your UF Classics Department, or check us out at www. classics.ufl.edu

Ytori Magazine

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