New Perspectives on the Liberal Arts

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The University of Florida, as you probably expect from a flagship state university, hosts a tremendous amount of lectures every year. Speakers across the humanities come to Gainesville for our potential edification and lifelong learning.

Starting this fall and running through next November, UF's Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere is coordinating a lectue series entitled Rehumanizing the University: New Perspectives on the Liberal Arts. The events are taking place across Gainesville, including the Millhopper Library & UF's Smathers Library.

This ambitous series examines the issues between universities and their neighboring communities:

For 2011-2012, the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere at the University of Florida has organized an eighteen-month-long speaker series that tackles some of the historical and contemporary tensions in the intellectual life of universities, and points to the way their relationships with the surrounding communities, from local to global, will develop in the future. Invited speakers will address, from a variety of disciplinary perspectives in the humanities, critical issues raised by ethnic and religious difference, cultural change and globalization, and the introduction of market forces into the halls of higher learning. Some of the topics to be addressed will include racial and ethnic integration, the place of women at institutions of higher education, global aspects of university’s resources and outreach (including through its museum collections), and the role of language and religion and art in a secular university setting. The ultimate goal of the series will be to provide a critical reading of universities’ contributions to academic advances and public life so that we can make sense of the complex issues that are integral to their future evolution. Invited speakers will contemplate and contextualize the hallmarks, aims, artifacts, and outcomes of a liberal arts education.

All events are free and open to the public.  For more information, visit www.humanities.ufl.edu. The Alachua County Library District is a proud co-sponsor of this series.