The university is a place charged with imagining our collective future. We turn to the humanities to craft the values that will shape that future, and to guide us as we face the challenges ahead.
How do we know what we know? What does the truth look like? Consider these questions and more at our exhibition
Seeing Truth: Art, Science, Museums, and Making Knowledge
William Benton Museum of Art
January 17–March 10, 2023
Learn more
This exhibition is supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.
Image: Blazing the Trail to the Distant Past by Arthur A. Jansson, used with permission from the American Museum of Natural History.
Support Undergraduate innovation this UConn Gives with a gift to the UConn Humanities Institute.
What does it mean to be human?
UConn Humanities
We turn to the humanities to craft the values that will shape our future, and to guide us as we face the challenges ahead. What will it mean to be human in the face of technological and ecological upheaval? How does art and culture enable us to anticipate trends we want to embrace, and help us to avoid ancient pitfalls?
The mission of the UConn Humanities Institute (UCHI) is to catalyze, facilitate, and promote research on these questions, and advocate for that research on local and global stages. By hosting annual fellowships to support scholarship here at UConn and across the world, by supporting humanities-focused programming, and by facilitating an interdisciplinary space for scholars to think, collaborate, and create, UCHI serves as a creative laboratory for scholars and students dedicated to foregrounding human values.
Humanities Institute Success
![monies icon](https://humanities.media.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2613/2019/02/monies.png)
Established, with the help of a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the first-ever New England Humanities Consortium, bringing together both ivy-league and state-sponsored institutions.
![handshake icon](https://humanities.media.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2613/2019/02/handshake.png)
Chosen to be an affiliate partner with the Yale Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition. UCHI Director Anna Mae Duane will co-direct a two-year seminar convening an international group of leading scholars of the history of slavery.
![chart icon](https://humanities.media.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2613/2019/02/chart.png)
Awarded a two-year grant of $140,000 by the National Endowment for the Humanities to investigate how legacies of slavery are shaping the perception and reception of conversational artificial intelligence.
Latest News and Events
![UConn Humanities Institute](https://humanities.media.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2613/2023/01/Newsletter-Opengraph-1200x630.png)
UConn Humanities Institute Awarded NEH Grant to Examine Slavery and AI
The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a two-year grant of nearly $140,000 to the University of Connecticut for the Humanities Institute to investigate how legacies of slavery are shaping the perception and reception of conversational artificial intelligence.
[Read More]![Sharon Harris Book Award 2024](https://humanities.media.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2613/2024/04/SHARON-HARRIS-BOOK-AWARD.png)
The 2024 Sharon Harris Book Award
The award committee has named Debapriya Sarkar’s Possible Knowledge: The Literary Forms of Early Modern Science as winner of the 2024 Sharon Harris Book Award, and given an honorable mention to Jason Chang & Alexis Dudden’s The Cargo Rebellion.
[Read More]![The UConn Humanities Institute, 2024–24 Fellows](https://humanities.media.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2613/2024/04/New-fellows-announcement-1200x630.png)
Announcing the 2024–25 Humanities Institute Fellows
UCHI is proud to announce its incoming class of fellows. Their projects take many forms including scholarly monographs, plays, and books of photography; span time frames from the ancient world to the present day; and cover topics from sign language, to enslavement, to health and disease.
[Read More]![Four album covers arranged in a 2x2 square: Childish Gambino's This is America, War's Greatest Hits, Pete Rock and CL Smooth's Mecca and the Soul Brother, and Mos Def and Talib Kweli's Black Star.](https://humanities.media.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2613/2022/01/Ogbar-playlist.png)
Amanda Douberley says #YouShould...
Listen to Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar’s playlist for the exhibition Facing History
![How Everything Can Collapse Book Cover Detail](https://humanities.media.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2613/2022/02/artbeyonditself-square.jpeg)
Robin Greeley says #YouShould...
Read Néstor García Canclini’s Art beyond Itself (2014)
![Sambhaji Bhagat stands at a music stand with a group of other South Asian men. They are all singing.](https://humanities.media.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2613/2022/03/Sambhaji-Bhagat.png)
Manisha Desai says #YouShould...
Watch Sambhaji Bhagat
![Drive (2011) movie poster](https://humanities.media.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2613/2022/04/drive-poster-square.jpeg)
Stephen Dyson says #YouShould...
Watch Drive (2011)
Listen
The UConnPopCast, hosted by Professors Stephen Dyson and Jeff Dudas, features scholarly analyses of popular culture and interviews with prominent scholars.
Why We Argue features conversations with scholars, artists, and scientists about topics related to truth, science, art, political conviction, and more.