Calendar of Events
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Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research (ICBR) October Events
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"Civil" Society? On the Future Prospects of Meaningful Dialogue
Speaker Series 2013-2014
Fall 2013: Social Fragmentation
This series is made possible by the Rothman Endowment at the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences with co-sponsorship from the UF Libraries, Honors Program, Department of History, Department of English, Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, and the Office of Sustainability.
General Objectives of the Series
Dialogues occur when conversations between two or more people clarify their positions on an issue. The sharing of opinions and ideas is the first step in solving significant problems. Why, then, do individuals, groups, and nations have such difficulty engaging in productive dialogue about life-and-death issues like climate change, racial prejudice, and the politics of wealth and health disparities? Since when has the polarization of opinions become so pronounced, and what is the impact of this state of affairs on civil discourse? And, why, in the digital age, do we rely upon the thirty-second sound bite instead of taking the time to reflect on the universal issues and interests that could unite us across our ideological differences? Moreover, if we want to change this status quo, what will it take to create safe spaces where we can exchange opinions with strangers and engage in genuine deliberation that emerges from individual experiences and not mere talking points?
In 2013-2014, the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere at the University of Florida has organized a nine-month speaker series that seeks to understand the dialogues (or lack thereof) about major issues that have gained political traction in the United States. These issues are as basic as the future of our planet, the price of minority discrimination, and how we construct and remember our collective history. This speaker series has two parts. The first semester will examine the fault lines that divide us, and the conditions that prevent reasoned dialogue. The second semester will generate discussions of how we might foster conditions that will bring us closer together, or at least help us to enter into broader dialogue about the human condition. This semester on “healing” these fractures will explore the future impact of digitization on the written word, the importance of solitude to personal transformation, and how academic scholars can productively frame controversial research topics.
October
Reproductive Rights in the US: 1973-2013
A UF Symposium hosted by the Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research and The Levin College of Law
October 2–4
Wednesday, October 2nd 4:30 PM, Pugh Hall
Viewing of HBO Documentary 12th and Delaware, followed by Q&A with Director Rachel Grady, moderated by Professor Churchill Roberts, UF Journalism and Communications
Trailer available here
Thursday, October 3rd, Levin College of Law, Room 180
- 10:00 AM Professor Kimberly M. Mutcherson, Rutger's School of Law, "Reproductive Justice and Reproductive Rights Forty Years after Roe: Assisted Reproduction, Abortion and Parenting in a Technological Age"
- 11:15 AM Panel discussion of reproductive rights in he U.S., moderated by Professor and Associate Provost Angel Kwolek-Folland (Women's Studies/History). Panelists include Louise Newman (History), Connie Shehan (Sociology/Women's Studies), Danaya Wright (Law), and Robin Lewy (Rural Women's Health Project).
Friday, October 4th, 12 p.m., Ustler Hall
"Gender and Reproduction" Art exhibit and reception honoring participating artists,
hosted by the Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research and
organized by Associate Professor Craig Smith, UF Fine Arts.
With thanks to the Center on Children and Families, the School of Art and Art History, the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, and the Law Association for Women for their support and co-sponsorship. This symposium was organized by Judith W. Page, Director of the Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research, and Danaya Wright, Professor of Law, Levin College of Law.
For more information, please visit www.wst.ufl.edu or email tuckey@ufl.edu
"Civil" Society? On the Future Prospects of Meaningful Dialogue: Lecture
The Perennial Racial Divide: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
Tuesday, October 15
5:30pm, Smathers Library (East), 1A
Presenter: Stephen Steinberg (Queens College, CUNY)
ABSTRACT: The election of “the first black President” was a watershed event, and Barack Obama was widely hailed as “a transcendental figure” who mended the racial divide and augured a post-racial future. However, a close examination of voting patterns in the 2008 and 2012 elections indicates that the electorate was highly polarized racially. Indeed, the half-century since the passage of landmark civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1965 has been an era of racial backlash that amounts to a counter-revolution on race. It has succeeded in driving one nail after another into the coffin of the civil rights revolution in such areas as affirmative action, employment discrimination, schooling, housing, welfare, food security, voting, and the evisceration of civil rights. This cold reckoning with history compels us to rethink the current state of race in America, as reflected in recent Supreme Court rulings on affirmative action and voting rights, as well as the acrimonious debates over the Trayvon Martin case.
BIO: Stephen Steinberg, a sociologist, is Distinguished Professor of Urban Studies at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Beginning with The Ethnic Myth (1981, 1989, 2001), his intellectual project has been to challenge prevailing orthodoxies on race and ethnicity, both in academic and popular discourses. His next book, Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy (1995, 2001) received the Oliver Cromwell Cox award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship. His most recent book, Race Relations: A Critique (2007) was described by one reviewer as “a devastating exposé of a century of the discipline's theoretical bad faith, sociological mystification, and conceptual obfuscation of what should have been the central and obvious socio-historical fact of the white oppression of people of color in the United States." In addition to his academic publications, Steinberg has published articles in The Nation, New Politics, and other popular venues.
Sponsored by Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere
Free and open to the public
2013 Florida Writers' Festival, Presented by MFA@FLA
Readings and craft talks by Patricia Lockwood, Ramona Ausubel, Claudia Rankine, Maggie Shipstead, and Bob Hicok. The authors will read from their work and hold informal talks.
For more information, see the event poster and postcard.
Wednesday, October 16th
7:30 PM, Alachua County Library District Headquarters
401 E. University Avenue
Special event before the festival: Reading by David Leavitt
Thursday, October 17th
7:30 PM, Alachua County Library District Headquarters
401 E. University Avenue
Reading by Patricia Lockwood
Patricia Lockwood's poems have appeared in Gulf Coast, Poetry, Agni, Denver Quarterly, the New Yorker, and American Letters & Commentary. Her first book of poetry is Balloon Pop Outlaw Black (2012). She lives in Florida.
Friday, October 18th
8-10 PM, Ustler Hall Atrium
Readings by Ramona Ausubel and Claudia Rankine
Ramona Ausubel is the author of the novel No One is Here Except All of Us, published by Riverhead Books in 2012, and a collection of short stories, A Guide to Being Born (2013). She is the winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Fiction and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine where she won the Glenn Schaeffer Award in Fiction and served as editor of Faultline Journal of Art & Literature. Ramona has taught and lectured at the University of California, Irvine, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Pitzer College and the University of California, Santa Barbara and served as a mentor for the PEN Center USA Emerging Voices program.
Born in Jamaica in 1963, Claudia Rankine earned her B.A. in English from Williams College and her M.F.A. in poetry from Columbia University. She is the author of four collections of poetry, including Don't Let Me Be Lonely (Graywolf, 2004); PLOT (2001); The End of the Alphabet (1998); and Nothing in Nature is Private (1995), which received the Cleveland State Poetry Prize. A recipient of fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the National Endowments for the Arts, and the Lannan Foundation, she is currently the Henry G. Lee Professor of English at Pomona College.
Saturday, October 19th
1-3 PM, Ustler Hall Atrium
Craft Talks with all five authors
Saturday, October 19th
8-10 PM, Ustler Hall Atrium
Readings by Maggie Shipstead and Bob Hicok
Maggie Shipstead's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Tin House, VQR, Paris Review Daily, New Republic Books, American Short Fiction, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. "La Moretta," a story published in VQR, was a 2012 National Magazine Award finalist for fiction. Maggie is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. Seating Arrangements, her first novel, was a national bestseller, a finalist for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, and the winner of the 2012 Dylan Thomas Prize.
Bob Hicok is the author of eight books of poetry, including Elegy Owed (2013), Words for Empty and Words for Full (2010), This Clumsy Living (2007), which won the 2008 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, and The Legend of Light (1995), which won the 1995 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. Hicok has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and has won three Pushcart Prizes. He is an associate professor of creative writing at Virginia Tech. Prior to teaching, Hicok worked for nearly two decades as an automotive die designer and eventually owned his own business.
This festival is presented by MFA@FLA, the creative writing program of the English Department at the University of Florida, and is sponsored by The Office of the Provost of the University of Florida, Dorothy and Terry Smiljanich, Storm Richards and Jeanne Fillman-Richards, The Alachua County Library District, The Center for Women's Studies & Gender Research, Volta Coffee, and the class of MFA@FLA 2014.
For further information please contact Heather Peterson (hwpeterson@ufl.edu) or Ryan Ruff Smith (rrsmith@ufl.edu). For general MFA@FLA program information see www.english.ufl.edu/crw/. For the latest in specific festival information see http://www.english.ufl.edu/events.html.
November
"Civil" Society? On the Future Prospects of Meaningful Dialogue: Lecture
The Fractured Teapot: Debating the Legacy of the Boston Tea Party
Tuesday, November 12
5:30pm, Smathers Library (East), 1A
Presenter: Benjamin Carp (Tufts University)
ABSTRACT: The Boston Tea Party of 1773 is known to every schoolchild, yet it recently found a new place in public debates after the rise of the Tea Party movement in 2009. This presentation explores the fractured nature of eighteenth-century politics, particularly in Revolutionary Boston. American reactions to the Boston Tea Party were mixed, and even Benjamin Franklin and George Washington expressed doubts about it. Some destroyers of the tea felt ashamed of their actions, and the phrase "Boston Tea Party" only became famous in the 1820s, fifty years after the event. Since then, generations of Americans have debated the meaning of the Tea Party and used it for their own purposes, from abolitionists to the Ku Klux Klan, from temperance advocates to tax protesters. Drawing connections between past and present, this presentation discusses how the appropriation of historical events can shape public debate.
BIO: Benjamin L. Carp is an Associate Professor of early American history at Tufts University. He is the author of Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America, which won the Society of the Cincinnati Cox Book Prize in 2013; and Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution. He has a B.A. from Yale University and a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, and he previously taught at the University of Edinburgh. He has written for BBC History, Colonial Williamsburg, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, and he has appeared on BBC1, C-SPAN2, C-SPAN3, and the Discovery Channel.
Sponsored by Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere
Free and open to the public
January
Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) will be having their first general meeting/lunch gathering of the spring semester.
Tuesday, January 22nd
1:45 a.m.-12:45 p.m., Newins-Ziegler Hall, Room 376
Bring your lunch; this will be a very casual meeting. They will discuss ideas for upcoming events, socials, and meetings for the spring semester. Anyone is welcome (graduate, undergrad, staff, post-docs, faculty) from any department, and any gender!
The Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) at the University of Florida is a graduate student- run, grass-roots directed program of discussions, workshops, and networking events designed to foster the success of women and other members of under-represented groups at all stages of their careers in science and engineering by providing a forum for academic and personal guidance and support. They welcome ALL members of the academic community at WiSE events.
The Past is Prologue
A Special Panel Discussion of the 150th Anniversary of the Morrill Act
Tuesday, January 22nd
6:00 p.m., Bob Graham Center for Public Service, Pugh Hall 170
Panelists: Former Gainesville Mayor Jean Chalmers, Patricia Hilliard-Nunn, African American Studies, Former Dean and Professor Emerita Madelyn
Lockhart, Steven Noll, Department of History, Paul Ortiz, Samuel Proctor Oral History Program.
Moderated by David Colburn, Interim Director, Bob Graham Center.
Sponsored by the Department of History and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Co-sponsored by the Bob Graham Center for Public Service, the Center for Humanities and the Public Sphere, the Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research, and the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program.
For more information about this event, contact organizer Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, UF Professor, History of Science and member of the 150th Morrill Act Celebration Task Force. Event flyer (PDF)
Faculty Readings
A Brown Bag Lunch
Wednesday, January 23rd
11:30 a.m., Ustler Hall Atrium
Please join us for a reading by two Women's Studies affiliates, Stephanie Smith and Barbara Mennel, of recent or forthcoming work. Bring your lunch. Drinks and dessert provided. Stephanie Smith, Professor of English, will read from her recent novel Warpaint and her next novel, due out 1 May 2013, Baby Rocket. Barbara Mennel, Associate Professor of English and German and Director of Film and Media Studies, will read from Queer Cinema: Schoolgirls, Vampires and Gay Cowboys, which illustrates queer cinematic aesthetics by highlighting key films that emerged at historical turning points throughout the twentieth century, and her co-edited volume (with Sabine Hake) Turkish German Cinema in the New Millennium: Sites, Sounds, and Screens. Event flyer (PDF)
For more information about events at the Center for Women's Studies, please contact us by return email (tuckey@ufl.edu President Bernie Machen
Sponsored by HUM 2305: What is the Good Life Moderator: Malini Schueller; Participants: Michael Falcone, Deeb-Paul Kitchen II, Paul Ortiz, Ron Sachs
This panel and audience discussion will address the history and legacy of academic freedom and activism at the University of Florida in the 1960s and 1970s. Participants in the round-table will offer their thoughts on the nature of activism of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students at UF and in Gainesville, particularly during the period of the civil rights movement, Vietnam protests, the Johns Committee, and Roe vs. Wade. They will measure the implications of involvement in political causes on freedom of expression on campus, faculty tenure, the creation of faculty and graduate student unions, the viability of a student-led campus newspaper, and life in Gainesville more generally. Following four ten-minute presentations, there will be time for a question and answer period and more broad discussion of these issues.
Sponsored by Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere UF Associate Professor of History and Director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program Paul Ortiz, author of Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920, will discuss his
penetrating examination of African American politics and culture. In this work, Professor Ortiz throws a powerful light on the struggle of black Floridians to create the first statewide
civil rights movement against Jim Crow. The book received the Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Book Prize from the Florida Historical Society and the Florida Institute of Technology.
Dr. Ortiz has published and taught in the fields of African American History, Latino Studies, the African Diaspora, Social Movement Theory, U.S. History, U.S. South, Labor and Documentary Studies.
Dr. Ortiz also co-edited and conducted oral history interviews for the award-winning, Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Jim Crow South.
Sponsored by the George A. Smathers Libraries, Authors@UF Series
Dr. Carole E. Newlands, Professor of Classics, University of Colorado
Sponsors: Classics (http://www.classics.ufl.edu/) and George A. Smathers Libraries Lecture by Professor Mary Weismantel, Northwestern University
Mary Weismantel is Professor of Anthropology and Director of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Northwestern University. She is the author of Food, Gender and Poverty in the Ecuadorian Andes and Cholas and Pishtacos: Tales of Race and Sex in the Andes. Her recent work on pre-Columbian art includes "Moche Sex Pots: Reproduction and Temporality in Ancient South America" (American Anthropologist 106(3):495-505) and "Obstinate Things" in Intimate Encounters: Archaeology, Sexuality, Colonialism, 2011 (Barb Voss, editor).
A Talk by Selma Leydesdorff
Selma Leydesdorff is a professor at the University of Amsterdam. Her recent book is on Srebrenica "Surviving the Bosnian Genocide" that was based on oral interview with mostly women of Srebrenica. She has also been involved in a number of projects on concentration camps and Holocaust survivors (including work on Sobibor). Recently she was asked to collaborate with the CNRS/NYU memory project, which rethinks 'the representation of war' in collaboration with the September 11 Museum (New York) and the Memorial of Caen (France).
This lecture is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the University of Florida's Center for European Studies with support from the Raymond and Miriam Ehrlich Eminent Scholar Chair, the City of Gainesville Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs, the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, and the Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research.
Click on this link for a two-page event program: www.wst.ufl.edu/wst/Gardens%20Conference%20Program.pdf
This interdisciplinary conference will explore the place and vitality of gardens as cultural objects and repositories of meaning. Diverse writers and artists have used the subject matter of gardens, landscape, and plants to educate their audience, to enter into political and cultural debates, particularly around issues of gender and class, and to signal moments of intellectual and spiritual insight.
Events will include panels, a book exhibit, a garden tour of the UF campus, and a guided tour of the Asian gardens at the Harn Museum. Elizabeth K. Helsinger, the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor of English, Art History, and Visual Arts at the University of Chicago, will deliver the keynote address. Other participants include Verena Conley (Harvard), Lisa Moore (University of Texas), Elise Smith (Millsaps College), and Katharine von Stackelberg (Brock University, Canada), as well as several speakers from UF.
Organized by Judith W. Page (page7@ufl.edu), Director of CWSGR; Victoria Pagan (vepagan@ufl.edu), Chair of Classics; and Brigitte Weltman-Aron (bweltman@ufl.edu), Languages Literatures and Cultures. This conference is sponsored by the Center for Humanities and the Public Sphere, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Office of Research, the Harn Eminent Scholars Chair in Art History, the Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research, the Department of Classics, Rothman Distinguished Lecture Series, the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, and the Department of English.
No registration is required. This program is free and open to the public.
Click on this link for an event flyer: www.wst.ufl.edu/wst/Gardens%20Conference%20Flyer.pdf
For more information the Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research or Center sponsored events, visit www.wst.ufl.edu
Laura Hobgood-Oster, Professor of Religion and Environmental Studies, Southwestern University
Humans and dogs have lived together for at least 15,000 and perhaps more than 25,000 years. Over those millennia our two species have explored much of the world together geographically, culturally, and spiritually. Some of the earliest evidence linking humans and dogs involves burial rituals. This fascinating connection between the two species suggests that dogs held a central place in early humans' quest to understand dying, death and the afterlife. Dr Hobgood-Oster's lecture draws on sources from diverse religious and cultural traditions to examine the ways humans and dogs have been linked together in both life and death.
Sponsored by the Department of Religion
Moderator: Bonnie Moradi; Participants: Carmen Diana Deere, Harry Shaw, Connie Shehan, Meera Sitharam, Kenneth Wald
UF has an incredibly diverse student body and it reflects the state’s population and history. This panel and audience discussion will look at the history of different racial, ethnic, and gendered populations at the University of Florida, and the relationship of curricular programs (like African-American Studies, Jewish Studies, and the Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research) to the growing and changing UF faculty, staff, and student body. In looking at the history of different student populations and programs at UF, participants will discuss the relationship of the culture of a university to diversity at that institution, and curricular and student-led mechanisms to help all UF students acquire a more global understanding. A key part of this conversation will be the role of mentoring and empathy in educating isolated student populations and creating bridges between faculty and students. In looking forward, this panel will discuss how to balance the history of racial exclusion at UF with ongoing socioeconomic issues that limit who can attend college today. Following five ten-minute presentations, there will be time for a question and answer period and more broad discussion of these issues.
Sponsored by Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere Moderator: Churchill Roberts; Participants: Allyson A. Beutke, Stacy Braukman, Kim Emery, Jim Schnur
Description of Problem: This documentary film screening, and following panel and audience discussion, will examine the legacy of the Johns Committee (1956-1965) in current social and political debates concerning public higher education in Florida nearly half a century later. Under the direction of Florida Senator Charley Johns, the so-called Johns Committee was designed by the Florida State Senate to weed out communism and homosexual activity across Florida. The Committee chose the University of Florida in 1958 as its first academic target. Building on the January and February panel discussions about academic freedom and diversity, this event will link to ongoing conversations about political influence in higher education, support for gay and lesbian students, staff, and faculty at UF, and decisions about how to record our collective memory of individuals and events at UF (including the J. Wayne Reitz Union). Following the film screening and four ten-minute presentations, there will be time for a question and answer period and more broad discussion of these issues.
Sponsored by Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere This symposium, sponsored by the Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research and the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program and co-sponsored by the Bob Graham Center for Public Service, the Department of English, and Philip Wegner, Marston-Milbauer Eminent Scholar Chair, the George A. Smathers Library, National Women's Liberation, Gainesville Chapter, and the Journal of Family Issues, will feature Author and Professor Stephanie Coontz, Evergreen State College.
2:30-4:00 p.m, Ustler Hall Atrium: Roundtable discussion of Professor Coontz's A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s, Moderator, Connie Shehan, Department of Sociology, Marsha Bryant, Department of English, Paul Ortiz, Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, Trysh Travis, Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research, and Maureen Turim, Department of English.
6:00 p.m, McKay Auditorium, Pugh Hall: Public Lecture followed by Book Signing and Reception, "Madmen, Working 'Girls,' and Desperate Housewives: Women, Men and Marriage in 1963 and 2013," by Stephanie Coontz.
This symposium is free and open to the public with free parking on campus in reserved lots off Fletcher and Buckman Drive. Organized by Dr. Paul Ortiz, Director, SPOHP and Dr. Judith W. Page, Director, CWSGR. For more information visit www.wst.ufl.edu or oral.history.ufl.edu
Stephanie Coontz teaches history and family studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and is Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on Contemporary Families. She is the author of "A Strange Stirring": The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s (Basic Books, 2011) and the award-winning Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage (Viking Press, 2005), as well as The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (1992 and 2000, Basic Books) and The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms with America's Changing Families (Basic Books, 1997). Her writings have been translated into French, Arabic, Spanish, Russian, Czech, German, Norwegian, Turkish, Greek, Chinese, Ukrainian, and Japanese.
Dr. Coontz has testified about her research before the House Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families in Washington, DC, and addressed audiences across America, Japan, and Europe. She has been a featured speaker at the Renaissance Weekend, PopTech, and Chautauqua and appeared on The Colbert Report, the Today Show, PBS News Hour with Ray Suarez, Oprah Winfrey, Crossfire, 20/20, NPR, CNN's Talk Back Live, CBS This Morning, CSPAN, the O-Reilly Factor and MSNBC with Brian Williams, as well as in several prime-time television documentaries, including ones hosted by Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters. Coontz has published articles in the New York Times, The Observer/Guardian, The Times of London, Wall Street Journal, Salon, Washington Post, Newsweek, Harper's, Vogue, LIFE, Time-LIFE Books, and Mirabella, as well as in such professional journals as Annals, Family Therapy Magazine, Chronicle of Higher Education, National Forum, and Journal of Marriage and Family. She has contributed chapters to more than 25 academic books. For more information, visit www.stephaniecoontz.com/about.htm
Presenters: Jeffrey A. Brown, Leela Corman, Megan Kelso and Trina Robbins
This conference hopes foster the scholarly exploration of intersections between women's writing in comics, women represented in comics, and the women who read them. To accommodate this goal, the conference will feature a mixture of formats: keynote lectures, workshops and Q & A sessions with guest artists, a round table discussion, and traditional academic conference presentations.
Sponsored by the English Department March 19, Tuesday, 6-7pm March 19, Tuesday, 7-8pm March 20, Wednesday, 5-6pm March 20, Wednesday, 6-7pm Free and open to the public Moderator: Willard Harrison; Participants: Erik Deumens, Kevin Knudson, Joseph Murphy, Christopher Sistrom, Betty Smocovitis
This panel and audience discussion will explore the relationship of research inquiry and teaching in the humanities disciplines and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Participants in the round-table will describe various ways in which advances in history, literature, and philosophy inform and are informed by work in computer engineering, biomedicine, neuroscience, and mathematics. In articulating the relationship of different bodies of knowledge and disciplinary cultures in their own work, the speakers will point to the central role of the liberal arts and sciences in education and innovation at the contemporary and future research university. Following five ten-minute presentations, there will be time for a question and answer period and more broad discussion of these issues.
Sponsored by Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere Please join Laura Edwards (Duke University) as she speaks on "Women, the Civil War, and the Legal Transformation of the United States. Edwards explores how legal changes that resulted from the Civil War actually unfolded in people's houses and backyards-and thus involved women, even though they were denied extended federal protection for their civil and political rights.
Ethnographer, theorist, and filmmaker, University of Pennsylvania professor Deborah A. Thomas is a distinguished scholar in Caribbean Studies. She addresses the politics of culture and performing arts, embodied citizenship, contestations over sovereignty, Rastafarian claims to reparations and indigeneity, and the interplay of race, gender, modernity, and globalization. Most of her research has focused on Jamaica and its transnational citizenry. With John Jackson, Jr. and Junior "Gabu" Wedderburn, she directed/produced the film, "Bad Friday: Rastafari after Coral Gardens." She is the author of Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization, and The Politics of Culture in Jamaica and Exceptional Violence : Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica. This lecture is presented by these UF units: The Center for Latin American Studies, the Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research, the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations, the Department of Anthropology and the African-American Studies Program.
King Hunter is an installation by MFA Photography candidate Elena Dahl of a midcentury modern kitchen blueprint, designed in 1956 by Margaret King Hunter and built in multiple homes throughout the U.S. by General Electric. This blueprint will be installed in the Ustler Hall atrium in the form of colorful patterned tiles, paying homage to a female modernist architect while highlighting non-homogenous aspects of women's progress. Join us for an opening on Saturday, April 6th, from 7-9pm in the Atrium of Ustler Hall at The Center for Women's and Gender Studies. Fantasy/Science fiction are genres that often offer trenchant social critique of the society we live in, but is this the case in Hollywood's adaptation of Suzanne Collins' brilliant trilogy, The Hunger Games? If you are a fan of Suzanne Collins' work or have seen the film, come join a conversation about the books and film, led by a panel of scholars from the English, Women's Studies and History Departments. Panelists include Stephanie Smith, Professor of English, Anastasia Ulanowicz, Assistant Professor of English, Rebekah Fitzsimmons, Graduate Student in English, and Louise Newman, Associate Professor of History.
To evaluate what being a mestizo meant in the early colonial Andes, we must examine the permeability of those categories that exhibited some degree of "groupness": Indians, Spaniards, and Africans. This presentation focuses on the relationship between being Spanish and being mestizo through a reading of the quandaries of a series of elite mestizos who strove to be accepted in Spanish social circles. These stories demonstrate that for elite women of mixed parentage there was no identifiable boundary between "Spanish" and "mestizo," while elite mestizo men encountered real barriers erected to the assumption of "Spanishness." Joanne Rappaport holds a joint appointment in Anthropology and Spanish and Portuguese at Georgetown University. She is the author of Cumbe Reborn: An Andean Ethnography of History, Intercultural Utopias: Public Intellectuals, Cultural Experimentation, and Ethnic Pluralism in Colombia, and The Politics of Memory: Native Historical Interpretation in the Colombian Andes.
A talk by Melvin Jefferson (Cambridge, UK). The Parker Library houses one of the most valuable Anglo-Saxon manuscript collections in the world. Jefferson served as the Head of the Cambridge Colleges' Conservation Consortium based at the Parker Library for over 10 years before his retirement at the end of 2011. He will talk about the history of the Parker Library and provide an overview of its holdings. He will discuss the process, challenges and results of the Parker Library on the Web digitization project, providing illustrative examples from his unique collection of conservation project photographs.
Sponsored by the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere, the Department of English and the George A. Smathers Libraries. Presenter: Sheila Slaughter In her public lecture, Professor Sheila Slaughter will discuss the rising emphasis on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and professional fields, and the many disparities this has created between these disciplines and the humanities in research universities. Among the disparities that will be discussed are: salaries, research funding, infrastructure, investment, course loads, and student numbers. In raising these issues, Professor Slaughter will speak to the ensuing deprofessionalization of the humanities. She will conclude by addressing how these trends may be changed.
A reception will follow.
Sponsored by Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere Location: The University of Florida Health Professions, Nursing & Pharmacy ComplexAll That and More: The True Purposes of College (PDF)
Thursday, January 24
5:30 pm, Grand Ballroom, Reitz Union
Free and open to the public
Humanizing Conversations: Roundtable
The History of Academic Freedom and Activism at UFMonday, January 28
6:00-7:30pm, Smathers Library (East) 1A
Free and open to the publicFebruary
Race Relations in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920
Tuesday, February 5
1:00 p.m., Smathers Library (East), Room 1AOvid and Violence in Text and Art
Thursday, February 7
5:00 p.m., Smathers Library 1A
Open to all of Gainesville
The Silence of Kinsey: A Modern History of Pre-Columbian Peru
Tuesday, February 19th, 4:00 p.m.
Ustler Hall AtriumSurviving the Bosnian Genocide: The Women of Srebrenica Speak
Tuesday, February 19th, 7:00 p.m.
Thomas Center (302 NE 6th Ave.)Disciples of Flora: Gardens in History and Culture
Thursday, February 21 and Friday, February 22
A Bond Into Eternity? Humans, Dogs, and Death
Thursday, February 21
4:00 p.m., Dauer 215Humanizing Conversations: Roundtable
Diversifying the UF Student Body, Faculty, and CurriculumMonday, February 25
6:00-7:30pm, Smathers Library (East) 1A
Free and open to the publicMarch
Humanizing Conversations: Roundtable
"Behind Closed Doors: The Dark Legacy of the Johns Committee" at UFMonday, March 11
5:30-7:00pm, Smathers Library (East) 1A
Free and open to the publicThe Feminine Mystique at Fifty: 1963-2013
A Symposium Featuring Author and Professor Stephanie CoontzMarch 13
2:30-4:00 p.m, Ustler Hall Atrium
6:00 p.m, McKay Auditorium, Pugh HallAbout Stephanie Coontz
"A Comic of Her Own," UF Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels
March 15-17
3:00pm-10:00pm (March 15), 9:00am-10:00pm (March 16), 8:45am-4:45pm (March 17)
Location: Pugh Hall (mornings and afternoons) and Ustler Hall (evenings)
Conference summary
Free and open to the publicSound of China: Folklore, Rock 'n' Roll, and Chinese Hip Hop
March 19-20
6pm-7pm & 7-8pm (March 19), 5pm-6pm & 6-7pm (March 20)
Location: McCarty A Conference Room 1151 (with entrance facing the Hub)
Film Screening: Rock Heart Beijing
Rock Heart Beijing (dir. Karen Winther, 2008, 58 min) is a revealing and often funny documentary that follows one of the Chinese Mainland's foremost rock bands, Subs – fronted by petite but fissile Kang Mao – as it tours China and Nordic Europe. It shows the band struggling with poverty, sexism, familial scorn, government censorship, and the pursuit of an endlessly redefined notion of freedom. Through the film, China is shown as a place where rock and roll has yet to lose its subversive and rebellious character, where musicians strive for more than fame and fortune.
Film Discussion and Lecture by Jonathan Campbell: China Rocks and the World Should Listen
Followed by a reception
Rock Heart Beijing will be introduced and presented by Jonathan Campbell. He lived in Beijing from 2000-2010 where he worked as a drummer, chronicler, booster, and agent in the local rock scene. His writing has appeared in a range of international publications. His book Red Rock: The Long, Strange March of Chinese Rock & Roll tells the tale not only of the rise and development of "yaogun" – more than just the Chinese word for "rock and roll" – but of China as well. As China's international role expands, so, too, does yaogun's potential – to rock, but also to teach us about rock and roll's power, potential and promise, which we, in rock's homeland, have forgotten. Campbell will look back on his China time with a decade-long immersion in the yaogun scene as well as shed light on yaogun's path and its future.
Talk by Dr. Xiaoan Sun: Folklore and People's Music in Contemporary China
Moderated by Professor Barbara Mennel
Chinese folk songs have the longest history, simplest structure, richest numbers, and the most diverse subgenres among Chinese culture. Even the earliest Chinese poetry was nurtured and derived from Chinese folk songs found 3,000 years ago. In this talk, Dr. Sun will guide us through a broad picture of Chinese folk music as it evolves and adapts to the modern-contemporary life. Dr. Sun was born and raised in a musician family in South China. He had extensive violin and vocal training for many years and participated in many singing competitions before he came to the states for his Ph.D. As a prominent scientist and musician, he has not forgotten his cultural roots and continues to practice and study Chinese folk songs in Florida, U.S. In the talk, he will offer his insider's point of view to elaborate and present some of the most beautiful and acclaimed music pieces in present-day China.
Talk by Dr. Ying Xiao: Global Hip Hop and Chinese Perspective
In view of the upsurge of global hip hop and its substantial role in contemporary Chinese music landscape and cultural life, in the talk, Dr. Xiao will look into the rise and development of rap music and hip hop culture in contemporary China. How did hip hop travel from its original roots to Chinese urban space? How well did it travel? How has it been translated and incorporated into a distinct cultural environment, musical tradition, and linguistic setting? What has been left out and why? What roles have globalization, indigenization, and new technology played in the structuring of hip hop culture in China? Through her in-depth investigation of Chinese hip hop, the talk explores the dynamic global, national, local interactions and offers an outlook on the bourgeoning cyberactivism and social media boom in the new era. Dr. Ying Xiao is an assistant professor of China studies and film and media studies at the University of Florida with a particular concentration on Chinese-language film, popular music, youth culture, gender representations, theories of globalization and transnationalism. She has participated in the curatorship of Reel China Documentary Film Festival since 2004 and organized the film series and workshop of "DV China and Social Change" in 2011.
Humanizing Conversations: Roundtable
The Humanities and STEM DisciplinesMonday, March 25
6:00-7:30pm, Smathers Library (East) 1A
Free and open to the publicApril
Laura Edwards presents the Gary C. and Eleanor G. Simons Lecture in American History
Wednesday, April 3
5:00 p.m., Smathers Library (East), Room 1AThe Mapping of Alternative Sovereignties: Violence, Politics, and Prophecy in Jamaica
A Lecture by Dr. Deborah ThomasFriday, April 5
4:00 p.m., FAB 105King Hunter
Art Installation: MFA Photography Candidate Elena DahlOpening: Saturday, April 6
Ustler Hall Atrium
Refreshments will be served.
The Hunger Games: A Roundtable Discussion
Wednesday, April 10
12:00 p.m., Ustler Hall AtriumHiding in Plain Sight: Gendering Mestizaje in Early Colonial Bogotá
A Lecture by Joanne RappaportThursday, April 18
5:00 p.m., FAB 103Treasures of the Parker Library
Thursday, April 18
6:00-7:00 p.m., Smathers Library (East), Room 1AHumanizing Conversations: Lecture
Privileging Science over Humanities: How Privatization and Vocational Training in Higher Education Reinforce Social StratificationTuesday, April 2
6:00-7:30pm, Ustler Hall Atrium
Bio: McBee Professorship of Higher Education at the University of Georgia’s Institute of Higher Education
Free and open to the publicJune
June 14-15
Friday, June 14, 5:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Saturday, June 15, 8:00 am - 5:00 pm
The People's Conference to Promote Health and Eliminate Health Disparities
The goal of The People's Scientific Conference to Promote Health and Eliminate Health Disparities is to provide culturally diverse patients, caregivers, community members, health care providers, health promotion professionals, and health researchers opportunities to (a) teach each other ways to provide or obtain culturally sensitive, patient-centered health care and (b) learn about evidence-based strategies and programs to increase health literacy, prevent and overcome common physical, mental, and sexual health problems, and help eliminate health disparities in racial/ethnic minority and under-served communities.
Sponsored by UF Health Disparities Research and Intervention Program
Contact information: Dr. Carolyn M. Tucker (tuckerresearchassoc@gmail.com), phone number: 352-273-2167
September
Reading and Conversation: the WARPAINT trilogy –
Warpaint, Baby Rocket and Content Burns
Wednesday, September 4
6:00-7:30 p.m., Library West Café
(1st floor across from Starbucks)
Refreshments will be served
Stephanie A. Smith, Waldo W. Neikirk Term Professor, 2012-2013 and Associate Chair/Undergraduate Coordinator, Department of English is the author of the WARPAINT trilogy: Warpaint, Baby Rocket and Content Burns. The three novels are intertwined by love and friendship, and deal with contemporary women who are struggling to balance art, love, illness and trauma. Her other published novels include Snow-Eyes, The Boy Who Was Thrown Away, Other Nature, and two works of criticism, Conceived By Liberty and Household Words. See event poster.
Workshop: Good Pipetting Practices
Thursday, September 5
10:30-11:30 a.m. or 1:30-2:30 p.m.
CGRC, Room 184
More details
This workshop is designed for those new to pipetting or needing a refresher course on the basics. Hosted by Rainin Instruments, LLC. Please RSVP, ICBR-qPCR@ad.ufl.edu
"Civil" Society? On the Future Prospects of Meaningful Dialogue: Lecture
Democracy and the Science Communication Environment
Wednesday, September 11
5:30pm, Smathers Library (East), 1A
Presenter: Dan Kahan (Yale University)
ABSTRACT: Promoting public comprehension of science is only one aim of the emerging "science of science communication" and is likely not the most important one for the well-being of a democratic society. Ordinary citizens form quadrillions of correct beliefs on matters that turn on complicated scientific principles they cannot even identify much less understand. The reason they fail to converge on beliefs consistent with scientific evidence on certain other consequential matters—from climate change to genetically modified foods to compulsory adolescent HPV vaccination—is not the failure of scientists or science communicators to speak clearly or the inability of ordinary citizens to understand what they are saying. Rather, the source of such conflict is the proliferation of antagonistic cultural meanings. When such associations become attached to particular facts that admit of scientific investigation, these meanings are a kind of pollution of the science communication environment that disables the faculties ordinary citizens use to reliably absorb collective knowledge from their everyday interactions. The quality of the science communication environment is thus just as critical for enlightened self-government as the quality of the natural environment is for the physical health and well-being of a society’s members. Understanding how this science communication environment works, fashioning procedures to prevent it from becoming contaminated with antagonistic meanings, and formulating effective interventions to detoxify it when protective strategies fail—those are the most critical functions science communication can perform in a democratic society.
BIO: Dan Kahan is the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology at Yale Law School. He is a member of the Cultural Cognition Project, an interdisciplinary team of scholars who use empirical methods to examine the impact of group values on perceptions of risk and and science communication. In studies funded by the National Science Foundation, Professor Kahan and his collaborators have investigated public disagreement over climate change, public reactions to emerging technologies, and conflicting public impressions of scientific consensus. Articles featuring the Project’s studies have appeared in a variety of peer-reviewed scholarly journals including the Journal of Risk Research, Judgment and Decision Making, the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Nature Climate Change, and Nature.
Sponsored by Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere
Free and open to the public
Fall Reception for the Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research
Thursday, September 12th
3:30 p.m., Atrium at Ustler Hall
The reception will feature presentation of awards, certificates, and scholarships and a talk, "Health Disparities in Society: A New Initiative in CWSGR," by Women's Studies Affiliate Marta Wayne, Professor, Department of Biology.
Refreshments will be served. See invitation (pdf)
Confronting History and the Good Life After Rosewood
Wednesday, September 18
5:30 p.m., Grand Ballroom of the Reitz Union
See Poster
Dr. David Colburn, Interim Director of the Bob Graham Center for Public Service, will deliver the Common Humanities Lecture
Free and open to the public
Proteomics Seminar: BIO-RAD, Total Protein Loading Controls: A more reliable method for normalizing western blot data
Wednesday, September 18
1:30-2:30 p.m.
CGRC, Room 184
More details
This seminar will address protein purification technology and the Next-Gen Chrom system. It will focus on MagPix technology and methods to streamline Western Blot Workflows.
Reading and Conversation: the WARPAINT trilogy –
Warpaint, Baby Rocket and Content Burns
Tuesday, September 24
2:00 p.m., Tower Road Alachua County Library Branch
Stephanie A. Smith, Waldo W. Neikirk Term Professor, 2012-2013 and Associate Chair/Undergraduate Coordinator, Department of English is the author of the WARPAINT trilogy: Warpaint, Baby Rocket and Content Burns. The three novels are intertwined by love and friendship, and deal with contemporary women who are struggling to balance art, love, illness and trauma. Her other published novels include Snow-Eyes, The Boy Who Was Thrown Away, Other Nature, and two works of criticism, Conceived By Liberty and Household Words. See event poster.
Proteomics Seminar: GE Healthcare Life Sciences, 2D-DIGE Spot-On Accuracy
Wednesday, September 25
1:30-2:30 p.m.
CGRC, Room 184
More details
Applying SD-DIGE (Difference Gel Electrophoresis) to isolagte proteins: All the steps in the workflow will be discussed with suggestions on how best to maximize the quality of data generated. Application examples and novel applications for Bioprocess development will also be introduced.