At a moment when multiple global crises are fracturing what we once took for granted, the humanities lead us not just toward greater knowledge, but toward greater understanding."

Michael P. Lynch, Director, UConn Humanities Institute

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

The humanities seek to understand the whole human being: our languages, our histories, our art and ideas. The mission of the UConn Humanities Institute (UCHI) is to promote research on these questions, and to act as a voice for that research on the regional, national and international stage. In hosting annual residential fellowships, offering opportunities for humanities-focused programming, and fostering an interdisciplinary space for scholars to think, collaborate, and create, the Institute serves as a global hub for scholars dedicated to humanist scholarship and activism. UCHI seeks to inspire and support scholars at all levels and across disciplines to take on the critical and public task of humanistic inquiry.

Humanities Institute Success

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Awarded a generous grant by the Henry Luce Foundation to help fund The Future of Truth: a multi-disciplinary, engaged research project aimed at investigating what truth is now and if, and how, it will matter in the future.

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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.

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Awarded a three-year grant of $750,000 by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to expand the New England Humanities Consortium (NEHC) Faculty of Color Working Group (FOCWG).

Latest News and Events

Sharon Harris Book Award 2023 Winners

The 2023 Sharon Harris Book Award

April 13, 2023

The award committee has named Melanie Newport’s This is My Jail: Local Politics and the Rise of Mass Incarceration and Dimitris Xygalatas’ Ritual: How Seemingly Pointless Acts Make Life Worth Living the winners of the 2023 Sharon Harris Book Award. Honorable mentions go to Martha Cutter for The Many Resurrections of Henry Box Brown and Nu-Anh Tran for Disunion: Anticommunist Nationalism and the Making of the Republic of Vietnam.

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2022-23 UCHI Fellow's Talk. Undergraduate Humanities Research Fellows. Karen Lau, “Soup Dumplings for the Soul: Ethnic Studies and Social-Emotional Learning” and Rylee Thomas, “The Ghostly Dynasty: Victim-Blaming, the Gothic Novel, and the Modern True-Crime Drama”. Wednesday April 19, 2023, 5:00pm, UCHI Conference room, Homer Babbidge Library. This event will also be livestreamed.

Fellow’s Talk: Karen Lau and Rylee Thomas

April 7, 2023

2022–23 Undergraduate Research Fellows Karen Lau and Rylee Thomas present on their fellowship projects: an examination of the link between ethnic studies and social-emotional learning and a contemporary young adult horror novel that plays on the conventions of both gothic novels and modern true crime. April 19, 5:00pm.

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Listen

Why We Argue. Season Two: The Future of Truth