The University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) is proud to announce its incoming class of humanities fellows. This year, we are especially excited to welcome our two inaugural Undergraduate Research Fellows, who will join two visiting fellows (including our Henry Luce Foundation Future of Truth fellow), four dissertation scholars (including the Draper Dissertation Fellow and the first Richard Brown Dissertation Fellow), and seven UConn faculty fellows (including the Mellon UCHI Faculty of Color Working Group Fellow). We have fellows representing a broad swath of disciplines, including History; English; Philosophy; Political Science; Linguistics; Digital Media and Design; Literatures, Culture and Languages; and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies. Their projects take many forms including scholarly monographs, biographies, documentary films, and novels, and cover topics from the history of early modern empires to the language of time and possibility. For more information on our fellowship program see our Become a Fellow page. Welcome fellows!
Undergraduate Research Fellows
Karen Lau
“Kimchi Jjigae for the Soul: Ethnic Studies and Social-Emotional Learning”
Project advisor: Jason Oliver Chang and Grace Player
Rylee Thomas
“The Ghostly Dynasty: Victim-Blaming, the Gothic Novel, and the Modern True-Crime Drama”
Project advisor: Ellen Litman
Honorable mentions:
Kathryn Atkinson, “Cenabis Bene: A Culinary Odyssey through Apicius”
Monika Rydzewski, “Look at the Screen!: Merging Media with Gossip”
Visiting Residential Fellows
Joseph Darda (Texas Christian University; English)
“The Naturals: How Sports Make Race in America”
Kareem Khalifa (Middlebury College; Philosophy)
Future of Truth Fellow
“Segregation and Social Inquiry”
UConn Faculty Fellows
Hind Ahmed Zaki (Political Science / LCL)
“The Price of Inclusion: Feminist Politics in the Shadow of the Arab Spring”
Heather Cassano (DMD)
“The Fate of Human Beings”
Cornelia Dayton (History)
“John Peters, A Life”
Anna Mae Duane (English)
“Like a Slave: Slavery’s Appropriation from The American Revolution to QAnon”
Sandy Grande (Political Science / Native American and Indigenous Studies)
“Indigenous Elders and Aging”
Stefan Kaufmann (Linguistics)
“What was, what will be, and what would have been”
Hassanaly Ladha (LCL)
“Solomon and the Caliphate of Man”
Elva Orozco Mendoza (Political Science and WGSS)
UCHI Faculty of Color Working Group Fellow
“The Maternal Contract”
Dissertation Research Scholars
Julia Brush (English)
Richard Brown Dissertation Fellow
“State/Less Aesthetics: Queer Cartographies, Transnational Terrains, and Refugee Poetics”
Yuhan Liang (Philosophy)
“Confucian Exemplarism and Moral Diversity”
Britney Murphy (History)
“Outsiders Within: Volunteers in Service to America and the Boundaries of Citizenship, 1962–1971”
Shihan Zheng (History)
Draper Dissertation Fellow
“The Opium Discourse in China, 1830–1910”
