The Alfred J. Hanna Symposium on Florida

Since Rollins’ founding, it has had a long history as a home for inquiry and reflection on the culture, people, and institutions in our state and region. In recent years, the national and international community has come to realize what many residents have always known, that Florida’s unique cultural, political and social experience place the state on the frontier of the U.S. experience. Not surprisingly, in recent years Rollins’ commitment to effective and innovative liberal arts education has provided students and faculty a living laboratory to pursue ideas grounded in local experience yet linked to global concerns. Rollins’ pragmatic, effective, and innovative liberal arts education has explored issues as wide-ranging as Disney Corporation’s community impact, New Urbanism’s anti-sprawl gospel, the transnational Americanism represented by the Latino experience, environmental protection and restoration, and African-American sociocultural life.


Last week, the Florida Studies Initiative (FSI), a multi-disciplinary work group made up of faculty from several departments, continued this tradition by building on the effort of Dr. Bruce Stephenson and organizing two events open to the entire college community and the public at large. Last year, Dr. Stephenson organized Florida Studies: A Pragmatic Vision of Curriculum Reform a call to examine how Florida could be a laboratory for students to understand pressing global issues. This year FSI continued this critical dialogue and celebrated ongoing efforts with two events. On April 14th bestowed the first Alfred J. Hanna Award. The award is named for Dr. Alfred J. Hanna, a Rollins graduate who went on to become a history professor and vice president of the college. Over his long career Hanna was a well respected scholar in Florida and Latin American history.

The recipient of the first Alfred J. Hanna Award was Dr. Michael Gannon, distinguished service professor emeritus of history at the University of Florida. Dr. Gannon is the author or editor of several books, including Florida: A Short History and The New History of Florida.

In celebrating the history of scholarship associated with Florida, the FSI also wants to acknowledge Rollins’ ongoing innovation in the study of Florida. Therefore, in addition to the Alfred J. Hanna Award, we would like to announce the first Alfred J. Hanna Symposium on Florida sponsored by the FSI. The decision to create the award and symposium grew out of discussion about ways to raise awareness of both Rollins' long connection to Florida Studies and to bring attention to the innovative new research being conducted both on-campus and elsewhere about Florida and its place in the world.

The Alfred J. Hanna Symposium on Florida allowed Rollins faculty and special guest the chance to discuss issues that link Florida's experience with issues of national and international concern. As the schedule below demonstrates, the plenary organized for this event offer unique insights into Rollins' faculty ongoing work.

Schedule of Events:
2:30-2:45 A Welcome from Dr. Roger N. Casey, Vice President for Academic Affairs & Provost
2:45-3:30 Plenary 1: Florida and the Popular Mind
Julian Chambliss, Leslie Poole, and Melanie Shell-Weiss
3:30-3:45-Break
3:45-4:30 Plenary 2: Florida, Ethnicity, and the American Experience
Gabriel Barreneche, Roberto Fernandez and Rick Foglesong
4:30-4:45 Break
4:45-5:30pm Plenary 3: Florida as Global Laboratory
Michael Gunter, Paul Stephenson, Rachel Simmons
5:30-7:00 Break
7:00pm Keynote Address: Melanie Shell Weiss, John Hopkins University
Dr. Shell-Weiss is author of Coming to Miami: A Social History (2009) and co-editor of Florida's Working-Class Past: Current Perspectives on Labor, Race, and Gender from Spanish Florida to the New Immigration (2009)


The symposium's theme, Why Is Florida Important? represents a powerful assertion on the part of the FSI that Florida is worthy of serious discussion from numerous disciplinary lens. The symposium offered quality discussion and interesting insights from guest such as Cuban-American author Roberto Fernandez and historian Dr. Melanie Shell-Weiss. There will be more to come on Alfred J. Hanna Award and the Hanna Symposium on Florida. This year's event represent Rollins' return as a center for scholarly inquiry and discussion on subjects crucial to our community and the nation.

History Department Profile: Dr. Yusheng Yao

Rollins College has always acted as a resource for the Central Florida community. While Winter Park residents have longed understood the college as a center for the arts, they sometime forget the dedication to academic innovation and excellence associated with Rollins. Yet, the school's history is one of innovation in teaching, scholarship, and service to the community. Today, with issues of global cooperation and competition daily headline, you can find professors in many academic departments dedicated to understanding these new global circumstances. In the history department, the history and future of China are a central focus for Dr. Yusheng Yao.

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Dr. Yao grew up in Beijing, China. As a sixth grader, he welcomed the Cultural Revolution when it started in 1966 because it relieved his worry about the upcoming examination for entering junior high school. Like millions of the Chinese youth of his generation, Yao was sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, where he worked in the fields at first and later on as a carpenter. Without opportunity for school education and ample time to kill in his spare time, Yao began to study English by himself in 1972. When national examination for college was restored in 1978 after Deng Xiaoping came to power, Yao could enter Peking University. After receiving his B.A. and M.A. degrees in English literature in 1982 and 1984, he had taught in the English Department of Peking University for three years.

Yao came the United States for graduate study on Harvard-Yenching scholarship in 1987. He received his M.A. in American Studies in 1992 and Ph.D. in history in 1999 at the University of Minnesota. His research on Chinese modernity can be found in numerous academic journals.

For more information on China, investigate the China Center at Rollins College.