Spanish in the Community

Engages students in the local Spanish-speaking community through academic investigation and service work. Consists of classroom meetings, community projects outside of class, and reflective assignments. Final project is the filming of an interview with a Hispanic immigrant. The group video editing is achieved thanks to the collaboration of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program.

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Teams of Spanish in the Community students worked to create a documentary for Spring 2020, "Metamorphosis of the Immigrant," only to have an unplanned major disruption mid-semester in the form of a worldwide pandemic.

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UF in the Dominican Republic

2022

2019

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Theater for Social Justice

Course created thanks to UF International Scholars Program and the Internationalizing Curriculum Grant.

Encourage students' ability to apply theater as an agent of change on social justice issues in the United States and Latin America. Includes reading of texts, writing of scripts and essays, role-playing games and Sports Theater. The base, of course, is López Méndez's contemporary Latin American Meta-theater and Augusto Boal's Theater of the Oppressed.​

Disaster and the Body

In the past year, Florida and its neighbors in the Gulf Coast and Caribbean have weathered hurricanes, earthquakes, and ice storms, all amidst a global pandemic. Artists have helped disaster-impacted communities come to terms with how to move forward, rebuild, and prepare for the next crisis. Choreographer, Michelle Gibson (New Orleans/ Dallas), and members of the Y no había luz theatre collective, Yari Helfeld and Julio Morales (San Juan), met on April 19th, 2021 from 7:30pm - 9:00pm EST to explore how artists’ tenacity reshape disastrous realities into artistic opportunity for healing, rebirth, and joy. 

This is the culminating event in a year-long series of engagements with these artists to explore questions of disaster and the body, curated by Colleen Rua, Asst. Professor of Theatre Studies and Rachel Carrico, Asst. Professor of Dance Studies.

​Creativity & Community: Theatre and the Arts for Health and Healing in Puerto Rico Summer Theatre Intensive

Join the UF College of the Arts School of Theatre and Dance and Center for Arts in Medicine for this Summer 2022 adventure. Working with the Puerto Rican theatre company Y No Había Luz, build upon your artistic practice and discover how creativity can be a healing tool in communities. During this hands-on experience in Puerto Rico, members of the Y No Había Luz company and special guests from various communities will guide participants through an educational experience showcasing how to leverage the arts for community well-being.

​For more info. clik here!

IDS 2935 Comida y Conflicto

Photo by Perry Grone on Unsplash

This course uses literature, film, art, music, and a variety of historical texts, both written and visual, to examine conflicts regarding the use of natural resources, specifically food production, in México, Central America and the Caribbean, at two key moments: the colonial period and the twentieth century. From Columbus´s initial assessment of the profitability of natural and human resources that he encountered, to contemporary negotiations of trade deals involving agricultural products, conflict and war have shaped the land, the people, and the cultures in the region. We focus on four products with a bloody history: sugar, bananas, coffee, and corn, to understand the local struggles, foreign interventions, and their aftermaths, including waves of migration. This course has been created and taught in collaboration with Professor Kathryn Dwyer-Navajas.

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