John Kaplan is one of America's most accomplished photographers. In 1992, his words and pictures project about the diverse lifestyles of 21-year-olds was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography. In 1996, Kaplan's first book for children, Mom and Me, was named by Parents magazine as one of its best books of the year.
Kaplan's exhibition, Four Nations, which examines at four views of freedom in China, Russia, Cuba and the United States has recently completed an exhibition tour of Korea and Bolivia.
In 1989, Mr. Kaplan received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for outstanding coverage of the disadvantaged in the United States. That same year, he was named National Newspaper Photographer of the Year in the annual Pictures of the Year (POY) contest, the largest photojournalism competition in the world.
An Associate Professor at the University of Florida, Kaplan teaches photography, design and international journalism courses. He has twice been named a photography juror for the Pulitzer Prizes and is been profiled in Who's Who in America and Who's Who in the World. Mr. Kaplan is a frequent lecturer at photography and journalism workshops throughout the world and has also received national recognition for his poetry and writing.
Kaplan's photography may be viewed at:
Kurt Kent teaches in the Journalism Department at the University of Florida, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1970. During that period, he has held administrative positions in the College of Journalism and Communications and the Center for Latin American Studies. While on leave from the department, he has taught at Glasgow, Scotland, and Boston, Massachusetts.
Kent worked on newspapers in Minneapolis and Duluth, Minnesota; Norfolk, Virginia; Gainesville, Florida; and Mexico City. He was granted the Ph.D. and the B.A. by the University of Minnesota and the masters by the University of Iowa. His academic specialty is international communication.
Dr. Kent has held a number of positions in scholarly organizations, including head of the International Communication Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. He took part in the Institute for Journalism Excellence of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1996.
He has chaired the thesis or dissertation work of about 50 graduate students. He has published about a dozen articles in refereed journals, about 15 other articles on teaching or academia, and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, in addition to presenting about 30 papers at conferences.
A native of Barcelona, Catalonia, Antoni Castells i Talens is a doctoralstudent at the University of Florida´s College of Journalism andCommunications. Before coming to Florida, Castells lived in Mexico, where he worked as a correspondent for the (Barcelona) Avui and as a reporter and copy editor for the (Mérida) Diario de Yucatán. He holds a B.A. from Ursinus College, Pennsylvania, and an M.A. from the Universityof Florida. He has taught communication, Catalan, and Spanish at several institutions of higher education, including the University of Florida, Ursinus College, and the Instituto de Estudios de la Comunicación de Yucatán. While at Ursinus, he served as the director of the college´s International Learning Center. He has presented his research on Latin American indigenous communication at academic conferences in the U.S., Mexico, and Ecuador. Being fluent in four languages and having a working knowledge of two more, Castells has traveled to over 20 countries in Latin America, Europe, and Africa.
