Calendar of Events
For individuals with disabilities requiring special accommodations, please contact the Department hosting the event within a minimum of 5 days prior to the program or service so that proper consideration may be given to the request.
April
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 1A
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.
The Mapping of Alternative Sovereignties: Violence, Politics, and Prophecy in Jamaica
A Lecture by Dr. Deborah Thomas
Friday, April 5
4:00 p.m., FAB 105
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
Art Installation: MFA Photography Candidate Elena Dahl
Opening: Saturday, April 6
Ustler Hall Atrium
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.
Refreshments will be served.
The Hunger Games: A Roundtable Discussion
Wednesday, April 10
12:00 p.m., Ustler Hall Atrium
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.
Hiding in Plain Sight: Gendering Mestizaje in Early Colonial Bogotá
A Lecture by Joanne Rappaport
Thursday, April 18
5:00 p.m., FAB 103
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.
Treasures of the Parker Library
Thursday, April 18
6:00-7:00 p.m., Smathers Library (East), Room 1A
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.
Humanizing Conversations: Lecture
Privileging Science over Humanities: How Privatization and Vocational Training in Higher Education Reinforce Social Stratification
Tuesday, April 2
6:00-7:30pm, Ustler Hall Atrium
Presenter: Sheila Slaughter
Bio: McBee Professorship of Higher Education at the University of Georgia’s Institute of Higher Education
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
Free and open to the public
June
June 14-15
Friday, June 14, 5:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Saturday, June 15, 8:00 am - 5:00 pm
Location: The University of Florida Health Professions, Nursing & Pharmacy Complex
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
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 SphereAll 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 publicArchive of Events