Author: Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

A Dialogue on AI Policy and Democratic Values

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2026-27 AI and the Human presents: A Dialogue on AI Policy and Democratic Values. with April Yoder, Editor-in-Chief of the Artificial Intelligence and Democratic Values Index (AIDV) for the Center for AI and Digital Policy (CAIDP) Avijit Ghosh, UCHI Research Affiliate, and Lead Technical AI Policy Researcher at Hugging Face. December 4, 1:00pm. Virtual

A Dialogue on AI Policy and Democratic Values

April Yoder, Editor-in-Chief of the Artificial Intelligence and Democratic Values Index (AIDV) for the Center for AI and Digital Policy (CAIDP)
Avijit Ghosh, UCHI Research Affiliate, and Lead Technical AI Policy Researcher at Hugging Face.

Friday, December 4, 2026, 1:00pm, Virutal
Register to attend

This panel brings together experts who approach the issue of AI Policy from both a global and technical standpoint.

As the headlines point to increasingly dire challenges posed by this technology, how can we rise to the challenge of implementing and enforcing policies that will ensure AI systems serve the public interest in a way that aligns aligned with democratic institutions and the rule of law?

Cosponsored by AI for ImpaCT.

Access note

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpretation, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible

Fellow’s Talk: Eleni Coundouriotis on 21st Century African Historical Fiction

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2026–27 UCHI Fellow's Talk, "Mirroring, Recalibrating, Reimagining Stories of the Past: Twenty-First Century African Historical Fiction." Eleni Coundouriotis, Professor of English and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, UConn). December 2, 3:30pm. UCHI Conference Room. HBL 4th Floor.

Mirroring, Recalibrating, Reimagining Stories of the Past: Twenty-First Century African Historical Fiction

Eleni Coundouriotis (Professor, English, UConn)

with a response by Surya Parekh (English, University of Binghamton)

Wednesday, December 2, 2026, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend virtually

This talk draws from a monograph in progress (“History for the Future: Twenty-First Century African Historical Fiction”) that explores why the historical novel has become a dominant form in recent African fiction. Although wide-ranging, these works share common features: they are epic in scale, they cover long chronologies that tend to decenter the colonial period, they are mostly written by women, and their authors are transnational subjects. The talk distills distinct ways in which the novels orient themselves in relation to an existing historiography by mirroring, recalibrating, or reimagining the argument. As a whole, this evolving corpus is breaking with two constraints that have shaped the novel in Africa since independence: a) the expectation that its historical imagination must be shaped in reaction to the colonial archive and b) the understanding that history in the novel is always rendered by depicting characters making history in the present and thus by adhering to a socio-realist mode that reveals characters’ representativeness. The examples discussed are Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness (2000), Aminatta Forna’s The Memory of Love (2010), and Leila Aboulela’s River Spirit (2023).

Eleni Coundouriotis is professor of English and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Connecticut where she is also an affiliate of the Department of Social and Critical Inquiry and the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute. Her research is focused on the novel (nineteenth-century to the present) with an emphasis on realism, historical fiction, empire, and postcolonialism (especially African literature). In addition, she has published on the intersection of human rights and literature with a focus on critical humanitarianism, refugee narratives/statelessness, and the narration and documentation of war. She is the author of Claiming History: Colonialism, Ethnography, and the Novel (1999), The People’s Right to the Novel: War Fiction in the Postcolony (2014), and Narrating Human Rights in Africa (2021, paperback 2023).

Surya Parekh is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Binghamton University and affiliate faculty in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. He is the author of Black Enlightenment (Duke University Press, 2023) and co-editor of Living Translation (Seagull, 2022) and Ritwik Ghatak: Occasional Essays for a 100th Birthday (Seagull, 2026). He has published in Paragraph, CR: The New Centennial Review, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Media Theory, and Postcolonial Directions in Education.

Access note

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpretation, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible.

Photography disclaimer

Photographs may be taken at this event and posted on social media or otherwise used for communication purposes.

Support UCHI

For twenty-five years the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute has served as the hub for the study of human society and culture at UConn. Help us celebrate UCHI at 25 with a gift to the Institute. Every gift will help us promote innovation and creativity in humanities research for the next twenty-five years.

Dissertation Fellowship Application Workshop

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2026-26 Student Success. Dissertation Fellowship Application Workshop. November 18, 3:30pm. Humanities Institute Collaborative Space, HBL 4th floor.

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpreting, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities.

Dissertation Fellowship Application Workshop

November 18, 2026, 3:30 pm

UCHI Collaborative Space, Homer Babbidge Library.

The UConn Humanities Institute (UCHI) is offering a workshop to assist graduate students in the preparation of dissertation fellowship applications in the humanities and associated disciplines. Any UConn graduate student interested in applying to UCHI’s dissertation research fellowship is especially encouraged to attend.

Faculty Talk: Kevin Feeney on Protest and Performance in East Rome

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2026-27 Faculty Talk. Abusing Your Rulers: Protest and Performance in East Rome. Kevin Feeney, Assistant Professor, History, UConn. November 12, 12:30pm. UCHI Conference Room.

Abusing Your Rulers: Protest and Performance in East Rome

Kevin Feeney (Assistant Professor, History, UConn)

Thursday, November 12, 2026, 12:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend virtually

Today, we tend to imagine the Roman emperor as an absolute monarch with few checks on his authority. In the sixth century CE however, the emperors of Constantinople also had to win over a crowd. This talk considers a remarkable transcript of a public confrontation in the Hippodrome, Constantinople’s central chariot-racing stadium, between a spokesman for the emperor Justinian and a group of rowdy sports fans called the Greens. As abuse and accusations fly before a vast popular audience, we see both sides taking part in a lively and public negotiation about justice and authority in the Eastern Roman Empire. Through this text, we can better understand how even the most powerful monarch in the Mediterranean depended on the consent of the crowd.

Kevin Feeney is a Roman Historian who researches the political and social history of the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity (250–600 CE). He is especially interested in comparative interdisciplinary work drawing on the social sciences. He has published a number of articles on Roman emperors and the political role of the Roman People, especially in Constantinople. He is currently revising his first monograph on imperial accession in Late Antiquity.

Access note

If you require accommodations to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpretation, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible.

Photography disclaimer

Photographs may be taken at this event and posted on social media or otherwise used for communication purposes.

Support UCHI

For twenty-five years the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute has served as the hub for the study of human society and culture at UConn. Help us celebrate UCHI at 25 with a gift to the Institute. Every gift will help us promote innovation and creativity in humanities research for the next twenty-five years.

Undergraduate Research Fellowship Information Session

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Undergraduate Research Fellowship Information Session. November 9, 3:30pm. Virtual.

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpreting, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities.

Undergraduate Research Fellowship Information Session

November 9, 2026, 3:30pm
Live • Online • Registration required

Register

Interested in applying for a humanities undergraduate research fellowship but don’t know where to start?

We are holding an information session for prospective applicants for the 2027–28 Humanities Research Fellowship—a year-long fellowship for UConn undergraduates pursuing innovative research in the humanities. In this session, we will go over the application process, offer tips and tricks for writing a compelling application, and answer questions.

Applying to Graduate and Professional Schools

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2026-27 Student Success. Applying to Graduate and Profession School. with Alyssa Dunn (Prof. of Curriculum and Instruction, Director of Teacher Education, Neag School of Education), Melanie Newport (Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies, History), and Sarah Scheidel (Director, Pre-Professional Advising). November 6, 12:15pm. Virtual.

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpreting, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible

Applying to Graduate and Professional Schools

November 6, 2026, 12:15pm
Live • Online • Registration Required

Register

Thinking about pursuing a career in law, teaching, or graduate study in the humanities or social sciences? Join us for “Applying to Graduate and Professional Schools” and learn from the people involved in the admissions process for law school, schools of education, and grad school. There will be ample time for questions.

Featuring Alyssa Dunn (Prof. of Curriculum and Instruction, Director of Teacher Education, Neag School of Education), Melanie Newport (Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies, History), and Sarah Scheidel (Director, Pre-Professional Advising).

Fellow’s Talk: Surya Parekh on Reading (in) the Age of AI

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2026-27 UCHI Fellow’s Talk. Reading (in) the Age of AI. Surya Parekh, Associate Prof. of English, University of Binghamton. November 4, 3:30pm. UCHI Conference Room, 4th Floor.

Reading (in) the Age of AI

Surya Parekh (Associate Professor of English & affiliate faculty in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Binghamton)

with a response by Kali Simmons (English & Social and Critical Inquiry, UConn)

Wednesday, November 4, 2026, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend virtually

The advent of large language models has forced humanists to confront a question first raised in the 1960s: how to read texts without presuming an author or creative force as the source or origin of meaning? The post-World War II emergence of electronic computing and corresponding discourses of informatics and cybernetics had prompted philosopher Jacques Derrida in Of Grammatology (1967) to formulate this question as a task of reading otherwise. For Derrida, reading that “escaped the classical categories” involved a deconstruction of the binaries of humanism, a deconstruction that took into account new developments in biology, paleontology, and cybernetics. A good deal of contemporary theorizing of artificial intelligence seems to be relying instead on older paradigms of humanism, paradigms within which LLMs are determined in a binary fashion as either intelligent and humanlike or non-intelligent and akin to calculators. Taking Derrida’s Of Grammatology as a point of departure, I ask whether there is space for a critical embrace of the new technologies by rethinking the human. I consider how some of the fields that have leveled the strongest criticisms of humanism—Black Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Women and Gender Studies, among others—might be particularly well-positioned to theorize about “artificial intelligence.”

Surya Parekh is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Binghamton University and affiliate faculty in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. He is the author of Black Enlightenment (Duke University Press, 2023) and co-editor of Living Translation (Seagull, 2022) and Ritwik Ghatak: Occasional Essays for a 100th Birthday (Seagull, 2026). He has published in Paragraph, CR: The New Centennial Review, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Media Theory, and Postcolonial Directions in Education.

Kali Simmons is an assistant professor of English and Social and Critical Inquiry at the University of Connecticut where she serves on the executive committee for Native American and Indigenous Studies. Prior to joining UConn, Dr. Simmons was an assistant professor of Indigenous Nations Studies at Portland State University. As a 2026–2027 fellow at UCHI she will complete a manuscript for her forthcoming book project, The Savage Screen: Indigeneity in the Modern American Horror Film. The Savage Screen documents, analyzes, and historicizes how Indigenous Peoples have been represented in contemporary American cinema.

Access note

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpretation, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible.

Photography disclaimer

Photographs may be taken at this event and posted on social media or otherwise used for communication purposes.

Support UCHI

For twenty-five years the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute has served as the hub for the study of human society and culture at UConn. Help us celebrate UCHI at 25 with a gift to the Institute. Every gift will help us promote innovation and creativity in humanities research for the next twenty-five years.

Fellow’s Talk: Dunahay Pereyra on PMOS Patients’ Sense of Self

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2026-27 UCHI Fellow's Talk. "Dunahay Pereyra is doctoral candidate in Sociology at the University of Connecticut. Her research is situated at the nexus of medical sociology and the sociology of embodiment with a focus on lived experiences of chronic illness and disability, particularly for invisibilized chronic illnesses. Her doctoral dissertation utilizes qualitative narrative interviews with people diagnosed with polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome to understand the ways that social and medical knowledge and meaning are constructed for chronic illness patients, and how their social and reproductive futures are shaped by illness." Dunahay Pereyra, PhD Candidate, Sociology, UConn. October 28, 3:30pm, UCHI Conference Room, 4th Floor HBL.

Managing (Un)Feminine Bodies: Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome Patients’ Conceptions of Self and Illness

Dunahay Pereyra (Ph.D. Candidate, Sociology, UConn)

with a response by Camilo Ruiz (Anthropology, UConn)

Wednesday, October 28, 2026, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend virtually

What are the social implications and medical narratives surrounding an under-diagnosed and under-studied reproductive chronic illness like polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), newly renamed Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome (PMOS)? Using the case of PMOS, this dissertation critically examines the connections between societal values and perceived health/ability for those living with chronic illnesses, by drawing on narrative interviews with PMOS patients to illuminate how these patients make sense of the dimensions of their own illnesses in relation to their bodies and social worlds. Employing feminist social constructions of health and gender alongside theories of embodiment, this dissertation examines how medicalized knowledge as a form of power intimately shapes gendered illness identities and dominant meanings about bodies for people living with the chronic illness PMOS.

Dunahay Pereyra is doctoral candidate in Sociology at the University of Connecticut. Her research is situated at the nexus of medical sociology and the sociology of embodiment with a focus on lived experiences of chronic illness and disability, particularly for invisibilized chronic illnesses. Her doctoral dissertation utilizes qualitative narrative interviews with people diagnosed with polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome to understand the ways that social and medical knowledge and meaning are constructed for chronic illness patients, and how their social and reproductive futures are shaped by illness.

Camilo Ruiz is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut whose research bridges medical anthropology, public health, and participatory action research to address health inequities, migration, labor, armed conflict, and environmental justice across the United States and Colombia. His scholarship combines long-term ethnographic research with visual, artistic, and participatory methodologies, advancing community-engaged approaches that generate both academic knowledge and tangible public impact. His current research includes projects examining heroin use and methadone treatment in Colombia, collective healing through community arts, immigrant labor and wage theft in the United States, and participatory environmental research with Indigenous communities in the Colombian Amazon.

Access note

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpretation, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible.

Photography disclaimer

Photographs may be taken at this event and posted on social media or otherwise used for communication purposes.

Support UCHI

For twenty-five years the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute has served as the hub for the study of human society and culture at UConn. Help us celebrate UCHI at 25 with a gift to the Institute. Every gift will help us promote innovation and creativity in humanities research for the next twenty-five years.

Environmental Careers Panel

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2026-27 Environmental Humanities. Environmental Careers Panel. October 28, 12:15pm. Cosponsored by the Center for Career Readiness and Life Skill with support from the office for sustainability.

UCHI’s Environmental Humanities Initiative Presents:

Environmental Careers Panel

Wednesday, October 28, 2026, 12:15pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend virtually

This event will have a special focus on humanities careers within the realm of the environment. There will be an opportunity for questions at the end of the moderated panel, and refreshments will be served.

Panelists:

Sydney Barnwell is a strategic communications leader, consultant, and community advocate working at the intersection of environmental justice, policy, storytelling, and community power. As Managing Partner and Principal at Integrity Acts, she draws on her experience leading statewide advocacy campaigns and coalition communications to help mission-driven organizations strengthen their narratives, mobilize communities, and advance meaningful change.

Julie Castillo is a graduate of UConn’s MEEM (Master’s of Energy & Environmental Management) program and a senior analyst supporting commercial renewable energy incentive programs at Eversource. Julie took a less conventional path, earning a B.A. in Political Science from ECSU in 2007, and working in Corporate Real Estate for 13 years until changing industries and starting the MEEM program.

Zoya Dhakam is an Energy Policy specialist, currently at CT Dept of Energy and Environment Protection, with over four years of experience in energy, climate, and sustainability at the U.S. federal level in Washington, D.C., and internationally in Pakistan, India, and Saudi Arabia. MPA from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (2023) and a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from the University of Connecticut (2018).

Dave Dickson (’93, POLS & ANTH) is a Senior Extension Educator and the Director of the UConn Center for Land Use Education and Research (CLEAR). CLEAR provides tools, research, and training to inform and support local land use decisions that impact human, environmental, and societal health. When pressed, or convenient, he will admit to being a lawyer by training, although not by practice or, he claims, inclination. He has a B.A. from UConn and a J.D, and MPA from the University of Colorado.

Moderator:

Professor Clarissa Ceglio. As a U.S. cultural historian trained in the interdisciplinary field of American Studies, Clarissa Ceglio works at the intersections of museum studies, public history, and digital humanities. Much of her research focuses on the affective and rhetorical roles that artifacts—material, visual, and digital—play in constructing national and social imaginaries within the context of museum work.

Cosponsored by the Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills, with support from the Office of Sustainability.

Access note

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpretation, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible.

Photography disclaimer

Photographs may be taken at this event and posted on social media or otherwise used for communication purposes.

Support UCHI

For twenty-five years the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute has served as the hub for the study of human society and culture at UConn. Help us celebrate UCHI at 25 with a gift to the Institute. Every gift will help us promote innovation and creativity in humanities research for the next twenty-five years.

Citation Needed: Humility, Trust, and Human Judgment in the Age of AI

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2026-27 Ai and the Human. Citation Needed: Humility, Trust, and Human Judgment in the Age of AI. With Anke Finger, Arash Zaghi, Kath Burton, and Tamara Poles. October 27, 3:00pm. UCHI Conference Room, HBL 4th Floor. Cosponsored by UCHI and the department of literatures, cultures, and languages.

Citation Needed: Humility, Trust, and Human Judgment in the Age of AI

Tuesday, October 27, 2026, 3:00pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room, HBL 4th Floor
Register to attend

We already communicate our research with voice, judgment, and purpose. Wikipedia shows how public knowledge can be written in a register that earns trust through openness, sourcing, and revisability rather than through authority alone, a different way of writing with purpose than the one scholarship usually defaults to. Generative AI raises a sharper question, though not the one most of us expected. The systems arriving over the next two years are likely to match or exceed expert-level reasoning and knowledge in most fields, so the live question is no longer whether AI can imitate a scholarly register but what remains ours once it can produce one in full: our purpose, what we owe our audiences, and the points where our judgment still has to enter. Following a short provocation, we will use an emerging reflective tool, built with and for humanities communicators, to surface how you actually want to show up when the tools keep changing and the judgment stays human. Whether you use these tools every day or keep your distance from them on principle, this session is for you: the caution many humanists bring is part of the judgment we want to examine.

Workshop Co-Designers:

Kath Burton, Founder of Radically Hopeful and Co-Director of the CHC Scholars Program
Anke Finger, Professor of German and Media Studies, UConn, and Co-Director of the CHC Scholars Program
Tamara Poles, Founder and CEO of Universal SciCom
Arash Zhagi, Professor of Engineering, UConn

Cosponsored by the Department of Literatures, Cultures and Languages, the Humanities Institute, Universal SciCom, and Radically Hopeful.

Access note

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpretation, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible