Artists & Scholars in Public Life at the University of Florida and Beyond
UF is proud to be a member-institution of Imagining America (IA), a national consortium committed to using the arts, humanities, and design to enact a more just and liberatory world. Faculty, staff, students, and community partners are invited to join the UF Imagining America Working Group and advance public scholarship through IA gatherings, collaborative projects, and resources.
Announcements:
- Welcome to the new IA@UF website. We’re glad you’re here! Join the UF Imagining America Working Group by signing up for the listserv: UFImaginingAmerica-L@lists.ufl.edu
- Share your project
Recent Projects
2010
Picture a 12 year old boy living in a cardboard shack on the Guatemala City dump. He was born in the dump, his alcoholic parents died of cirrhosis, and works every day alongside other children and families who glean through the garbage for food to eat or something to sell. He’s never been to school. He has no dreams beyond survival.
Picture a 20 year old UF student with a heart for service. She speaks some Spanish but would like to be fluent. She wants to see the world before returning to Florida to pursue her career.
UF in Guatemala: International Service Learning will bring these two young people together for 6 weeks. She will live with a Guatemalan family and work with him at Safe Passage, helping with homework, sharing her musical and sports talent, studying current issues in Central America and reflecting on the challenges they both face. She’ll return to Florida to work with at-risk Hispanic youths. He will graduate from high school. Their dialogue will continue, it will shape their lives and their countries.
For more information: www.spanishandportuguese.ufl.edu
Contact: Kathy Navajas navajas@ufl.edu
2010
Picture a 12 year old boy living in a cardboard shack on the Guatemala City dump. He was born in the dump, his alcoholic parents died of cirrhosis, and works every day alongside other children and families who glean through the garbage for food to eat or something to sell. He’s never been to school. He has no dreams beyond survival.
Picture a 20 year old UF student with a heart for service. She speaks some Spanish but would like to be fluent. She wants to see the world before returning to Florida to pursue her career.
UF in Guatemala: International Service Learning will bring these two young people together for 6 weeks. She will live with a Guatemalan family and work with him at Safe Passage, helping with homework, sharing her musical and sports talent, studying current issues in Central America and reflecting on the challenges they both face. She’ll return to Florida to work with at-risk Hispanic youths. He will graduate from high school. Their dialogue will continue, it will shape their lives and their countries.
For more information: www.spanishandportuguese.ufl.edu
Contact: Kathy Navajas navajas@ufl.edu
2009
Katerie Gladdys, Assistant Professor- School of Art and Art History
Piles of citrus and loquats sit uneaten beneath trees in the ubiquitous subdivisions that characterize the landscape. The fruit trees that dot people’s yards become a potential resource for nutrition. I think about what can be done with fruit and imagine systems of distribution that could serve as metaphors to create community from a marginalized and unused resource. This project explores the act an exchange—asking for something that is free requiring no effort on the part of the owner other than access to their personal space, transforming the fruit into jam (product) and finally returning the fruit not only to the owner of the tree, but to other neighbors who own fruit trees in the form of jars of jam. My research consists of walking and driving through the neighborhoods around my home and mapping the location of loquat trees and citrus. I ask permission of the people who live at each location to pick their fruit, collecting not only fruit, but recording narratives about their relationship to their trees, perspectives on giving, ownership, and the potential transformation of space that could occur when a resource is shared.
For more information:
http://layoftheland.net
2009
Katerie Gladdys, Assistant Professor- School of Art and Art History
Piles of citrus and loquats sit uneaten beneath trees in the ubiquitous subdivisions that characterize the landscape. The fruit trees that dot people’s yards become a potential resource for nutrition. I think about what can be done with fruit and imagine systems of distribution that could serve as metaphors to create community from a marginalized and unused resource. This project explores the act an exchange—asking for something that is free requiring no effort on the part of the owner other than access to their personal space, transforming the fruit into jam (product) and finally returning the fruit not only to the owner of the tree, but to other neighbors who own fruit trees in the form of jars of jam. My research consists of walking and driving through the neighborhoods around my home and mapping the location of loquat trees and citrus. I ask permission of the people who live at each location to pick their fruit, collecting not only fruit, but recording narratives about their relationship to their trees, perspectives on giving, ownership, and the potential transformation of space that could occur when a resource is shared.
For more information:
http://layoftheland.net
2009
In the fall of 2009 the advanced drawing class at the UF School of Art and Art History were invited by Lynn Horton, director of the Tacachale farm to participate in a beautification project at a farm located at Gainesville’s Tacachale community.
The mural project was an opportunity to engage the eleven senior majors in community-based initiative. Students were challenged to critically think and to look closely at the Tacachale community to enable participants to experience, discuss, and understand social issues in a significant way. The students assisted the community by making the farm facility more identifiable as well as draw attention to it to highlight its goal of sustainability, community and general better place in which to work and live
The aim of the experience is to contribute volunteer hours to communities in need, and to positively influence the life of each student. Students were emboldened to take educated steps toward valuing and prioritizing their own communities. As we know many of the students attending UF are from out of town and call Gainesville ether home for four years. Professor Lake felt that the experience would increase the likelihood that participants will transfer their experience on-site back to their own communities upon graduating.
Organized by: Lauren Garber Lake, Associate Professor- School of Art + Art History
2009
In the fall of 2009 the advanced drawing class at the UF School of Art and Art History were invited by Lynn Horton, director of the Tacachale farm to participate in a beautification project at a farm located at Gainesville’s Tacachale community.
The mural project was an opportunity to engage the eleven senior majors in community-based initiative. Students were challenged to critically think and to look closely at the Tacachale community to enable participants to experience, discuss, and understand social issues in a significant way. The students assisted the community by making the farm facility more identifiable as well as draw attention to it to highlight its goal of sustainability, community and general better place in which to work and live
The aim of the experience is to contribute volunteer hours to communities in need, and to positively influence the life of each student. Students were emboldened to take educated steps toward valuing and prioritizing their own communities. As we know many of the students attending UF are from out of town and call Gainesville ether home for four years. Professor Lake felt that the experience would increase the likelihood that participants will transfer their experience on-site back to their own communities upon graduating.
Organized by: Lauren Garber Lake, Associate Professor- School of Art + Art History
2009
Since 1988, the UF Art Education Program has sponsored The Imagination Station at the Downtown Festival and Art Show. The Imagination Station is an arts activity area for local children and their families. Over forty volunteers from UF manage ten activity tables that provide opportunities for children to paint and make artist books, collages, crazy hats, chalk drawings on the pavement, and more. Each year we see around 1000 kids and their parents over the two days of the festival.
For more information: http://www.arts.ufl.edu/programs/arteducation.aspx
Dr Craig Roland-croland@ufl.edu
Dr. Michelle Tillander-mtilland@ufl.edu
2009
Since 1988, the UF Art Education Program has sponsored The Imagination Station at the Downtown Festival and Art Show. The Imagination Station is an arts activity area for local children and their families. Over forty volunteers from UF manage ten activity tables that provide opportunities for children to paint and make artist books, collages, crazy hats, chalk drawings on the pavement, and more. Each year we see around 1000 kids and their parents over the two days of the festival.
For more information: http://www.arts.ufl.edu/programs/arteducation.aspx
Dr Craig Roland-croland@ufl.edu
Dr. Michelle Tillander-mtilland@ufl.edu
2009
On Friday, Oct. 2, 2009, the Kids with Cameras Foundation celebrated Mahatma Gandhi’s 140th birthday with a worldwide screening of the Academy Award-winning documentary film Born into Brothels.
A Gainesville screening party was held at UF alumnus’ gallery, Randy Batista Photography Gallery in Gainesville.
The event featured videos by current School of Art and Art History (SA+AH) Drawing and Painting MFA candidate Radhika Agrawala, co-orgainzed by Garima Thakur (SA+AH Graphic Design MFA candidate), Sarah Fitzpatrick (UF alumnae) & Lauren Lake (faculty, SA+AH)
Volunteers from the SA+AH included: Andrew Hendrixson, Nick Pilato, David Tarafa, Scott Horsley, Jill Mullins, Radhika Agarwala and Garima Thakur
Speakers included: Anita Anantharam, Assistant Professor, UF Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research
2009
On Friday, Oct. 2, 2009, the Kids with Cameras Foundation celebrated Mahatma Gandhi’s 140th birthday with a worldwide screening of the Academy Award-winning documentary film Born into Brothels.
A Gainesville screening party was held at UF alumnus’ gallery, Randy Batista Photography Gallery in Gainesville.
The event featured videos by current School of Art and Art History (SA+AH) Drawing and Painting MFA candidate Radhika Agrawala, co-orgainzed by Garima Thakur (SA+AH Graphic Design MFA candidate), Sarah Fitzpatrick (UF alumnae) & Lauren Lake (faculty, SA+AH)
Volunteers from the SA+AH included: Andrew Hendrixson, Nick Pilato, David Tarafa, Scott Horsley, Jill Mullins, Radhika Agarwala and Garima Thakur
Speakers included: Anita Anantharam, Assistant Professor, UF Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research
2009
On the 2nd annual Mississippi Freedom research trip to the Delta region of Mississippi, also heartland of the Civil Rights Movement, student researchers of the University of Florida on this trip assisted in the production of this roundtable discussion on African American activism featuring leaders in the field.
THURSDAY EVENING: 7:00 pm. August 20, 2009. Civil Rights and Black Power legacies roundtable at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, featuring noted scholars Hasan Kwame Jeffries (Ohio State University); Curtis Austin, (University of Southern Mississippi); Emilye Crosby (SUNYGeneseo ), Margaret Block, and an essay written by Dr. Zoharah Simmons of the University of Florida and read by Khambria Clarke, undergraduate of the University of Florida. Introductions by Arlene Sanders and moderator Dr. Paul Ortiz of the University of Florida.
We will seminar with some of the top civil rights movement scholars and activists in the United States at the historically black college, Delta State University. This will be a powerful event and we wiII have a chance to talk with great scholars as well as contemporary students and activists in attendance.
2009
On the 2nd annual Mississippi Freedom research trip to the Delta region of Mississippi, also heartland of the Civil Rights Movement, student researchers of the University of Florida on this trip assisted in the production of this roundtable discussion on African American activism featuring leaders in the field.
THURSDAY EVENING: 7:00 pm. August 20, 2009. Civil Rights and Black Power legacies roundtable at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, featuring noted scholars Hasan Kwame Jeffries (Ohio State University); Curtis Austin, (University of Southern Mississippi); Emilye Crosby (SUNYGeneseo ), Margaret Block, and an essay written by Dr. Zoharah Simmons of the University of Florida and read by Khambria Clarke, undergraduate of the University of Florida. Introductions by Arlene Sanders and moderator Dr. Paul Ortiz of the University of Florida.
We will seminar with some of the top civil rights movement scholars and activists in the United States at the historically black college, Delta State University. This will be a powerful event and we wiII have a chance to talk with great scholars as well as contemporary students and activists in attendance.