Author: Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

You Should…Watch: The Half of It by Alice Wu (2020) (Na-Rae Kim, UConn Asian and Asian American Studies Institute)

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Half of It movie posterIt is a Netflix release with an Asian/American cast that began around the time of the popular success of Crazy Rich Asians and K-dramas. In that sense, it is one of the latest forms of consuming racial minorities under liberal multiculturalism, marking the arrival of Asian Americans to the space of American evening leisure.

The premise itself is not the most novel—it is a modern retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac after all—but the film resounds with astute and witty observations. Ellie Chu, a bookish and friendless high school student in Squahamish Washington, agrees to write love letters in exchange for money for Paul Munsky, a popular and goodhearted but not super bright football player. But the problem is that the letters are for Aster Flores, a girl Ellie also loves. As the film progresses, we find Ellie, Paul, and Aster come to observe each other, and ultimately their deeply-hidden, vulnerable, inner selves. Ellie’s letters bring together most unlikely people and forge strange friendships, revealing the power of seeing and facing self, others, and the world around us.

We come to realize then that the film also invites us, the audience, to observe not only the characters but also ourselves. To be reminded what it is like to search, yearn, and love, and to apprehend American life. It is, after all, a quiet love letter to America—beckoning us to observe the banality and particularity of Asian American life even in a small American town, resounding with love for what America is and what it can be.

– Na-Rae Kim
Assistant Professor in Residence and Interim Director
Asian and Asian American Studies Institute

Na-Rae Kim's headshotWho is Na-Rae Kim? Na-Rae Kim is an Assistant Professor in Residence and Associate Director at the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute, University of Connecticut. She specializes in transnational Korean literature, Asian American literature, history and theory of the novel, and Critical Asian studies. Her book project, Re-Turning Korea: Navigating Homelands in Korean American Literature, explores 21-Century Korean American literary imaginations of South and North Korea.

Fellow’s Talk: Sean Frederick Forbes on Archaeological Revival

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A Poetry Reading: Archaeological Revival. Sean Frederick Forbes, With a response by Amy Meyers. Live. Online. Registration Required. February 10, 2021 4:00pm.

A Poetry Reading: Archeological Revival

Sean Frederick Forbes (Assistant Professor-in-Residence of English, UConn)

with a response by Amy Meyers

Wednesday, February 10, 2021, 4:00pm (Online—Register here)

Sean Frederick Forbes will read selected poems from his work-in-progress, Archaeological Revival. He’ll discuss the genesis of his project, his artistic, cultural and literary influences, and what shapes his poetic narrative style of writing.

Sean Frederick Forbes is an Assistant Professor-in-Residence of English and the Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Connecticut. His poems have appeared in Chagrin River Review, Sargasso, A Journal of Caribbean Literature, Language, and Culture, Crab Orchard Review, Long River Review, and Midwest Quarterly. In 2009, he received a Woodrow Wilson Mellon Mays University Fellows Travel and Research Grant for travel to Providencia, Colombia. Providencia, his first book of poetry, was published in 2013. He has co-edited two collections of personal narratives titled What Does It Mean to be White in America? Breaking the White Code of Silence: Personal Narratives by White Americans (2016) and The Beiging of America: Being Mixed Race in the 21st Century (2017). He serves as the poetry editor for New Square, the official publication of The Sancho Panza Literary Society for which he is a founding member. In 2017, he received first place in the Nutmeg Poetry Contest from the Connecticut Poetry Society.

Amy Meyers (Yale Ph.D., American Studies, 1985) retired from the directorship of the Yale Center for British Art in June of 2019. Prior to her appointment in July of 2002, she spent much of her career at research institutes, including Dumbarton Oaks; the Center for Advanced Study in Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, where she served as Curator of American Art from 1988 through June of 2002. Meyers also has taught the history of art at the University of Michigan, the California Institute of Technology, and Yale, where she was an affiliate of the History of Science and Medicine Program and an adjunct professor in the Department of the History of Art. Meyers has written extensively on the visual and material culture of natural history in the transatlantic world, serving as editor of Knowing Nature: Art and Science in Philadelphia, 1740 to 1840 (Yale University Press, 2011, with the assistance of Lisa Ford); with Harold Cook and Pamela Smith, Ways of Making and Knowing: The Material Culture of Empirical Knowledge (University of Michigan Press, 2011); with Therese O’Malley, The Art of Natural History: Illustrated Treatises and Botanical Paintings, 1400-1850 (National Gallery of Art, Studies in The History of Art Series, 2008); Art and Science in America: Issues of Representation (The Huntington, 1998); and, with Margaret Pritchard, Empire’s Nature: Mark Catesby’s New World Vision (University of North Carolina Press, 1998). She also has worked with colleagues to organize numerous international symposia in the field, including Curious Specimens: Enlightenment Objects, Collections, Narratives (London, 2010), Ways of Making and Knowing: The Material Culture of Empirical Knowledge (London, 2005); and ‘Curious in Our Way’: The Culture of Nature in Philadelphia, 1740 to 1840 (Philadelphia, 2004).

Registration is required for the event.

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057.

Publishing NOW: Humanities Journals

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Publishing NOW: Humanities Journals, advice from three journal editors. Heather Battaly (Philosophy), David Embrick (Sociology), Charles Mahoney (English). Live. Online. Registration required. February 10, 2021, 1:15pm

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057.

The University of Connecticut Humanities Institute presents:

Publishing NOW!

Humanities Journals: Advice from Three Journal Editors.

Heather Battaly (Philosophy, UConn)
David G. Embrick (Sociology and Africana Studies, UConn)
Charles Mahoney (English and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, UConn)

February 10, 2021, 1:15–2:30pm

An online webinar. Event registration is required for attendance.

Heather Battaly is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut. She specializes in epistemology, ethics, and virtue theory. She is the author of Virtue (Polity 2015), editor of The Routledge Handbook of Virtue Epistemology (2018) and of Virtue and Vice, Moral and Epistemic (Blackwell 2010), and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Philosophical Research. She has published widely on the topics of intellectual virtue and intellectual vice. Her currents projects focus on humility, closed-mindedness, and vice epistemology.

David G. Embrick holds a joint position as Associate Professor in the Sociology Department and the Africana Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut. Embrick’s research has centered largely on the impact of contemporary forms of racism on people of color. While most of his research is on what he has labeled “diversity ideology” and inequalities in the business world, he has published on race and education, racial microaggressions, the impact of schools-welfare-and prisons on people of color, and issues of sex discrimination. He serves as the founding co-editor of Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, founding book series editor of “Sociology of Diversity” with Bristol University Press, and founding book series co-editor of “Sociology of Race and Ethnicity” with University of Georgia Press.

Charles Mahoney, Professor of English and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Connecticut, specializes in British Romantic literature and culture. The author and editor of various books and articles on Romantic poetry and non-fiction prose, he is currently completing work on an edition of Coleridge’s writings on Shakespeare for Princeton University Press. Since 2020, he has served as the editor of The Wordsworth Circle.

Fellow’s Talk: Amanda J. Crawford on Misinformation & the Media

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Misinformation and the Media: Lessons from the Sandy Hook Shooting. Assistant Professor of Journalism Amanda J. Crawford with a response by Ashley Gangi. Live. Online. Registration required. Feb 3, 2021, 4:00pm.

Misinformation & the Media: Lessons from the Sandy Hook Shooting

Amanda J. Crawford (Assistant Professor of Journalism, UConn)

with a response by Ashley Gangi (Ph.D. Candidate, English, UConn)

Wednesday, February 3, 2021, 4:00pm (Online—Register here)

After the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the international media descended on the small town of Newtown, Connecticut. Though errors may be inevitable in breaking news coverage, the mistakes made by journalists in the first 24 hours fueled doubts about the shooting that linger today. Other coverage decisions exposed private individuals to years of harassment, fed “trolls,” and helped denialism to spread. As conspiracy theories roil public discourse, the lessons from Sandy Hook reveal points of caution for journalists and local governments and help illustrate the challenges in combatting misinformation.

Amanda J. Crawford is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut, where she teaches reporting, journalism ethics and media law. A former reporter for Bloomberg News, The Arizona Republic and The Baltimore Sun, Crawford has covered elections and government across the U.S. and written extensively about gun policy, criminal justice, immigration, health care, reproductive rights and sexual assault. Her writing has been widely published in other major media outlets and literary journals including Businessweek, People, National Geographic, Ms. Magazine, Phoenix Magazine, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Creative Nonfiction. Before coming to UConn, she held faculty appointments at Western Kentucky University and Arizona State University. Her UCHI fellowship project is a narrative nonfiction book that follows the fight against misinformation in the years since the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Ashley Gangi is a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the English department at the University of Connecticut. Her research interests include nineteenth-century American literature, maritime literature, and literature of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era having to do with finance. Her dissertation, “May I Present Myself? Masks, Masquerades, and the Drama of Identity in Nineteenth-Century American Literature” explores the relationship between confidence men and women and conceptions of value in nineteenth-century America. She has been published in Studies in American Naturalism and has a piece forthcoming in the “Extracts” section of Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies.

Registration is required for the event.

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057.

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Fellow’s Talk: Elizabeth Athens on William Bartram’s Vision of the Natural World

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2021–21 UCHI Fellow's Talk. An Essay Towards a Natural History of William Bartram's Drawings. Assistant Professor of Art History Elizabeth Athens with a response by Helen M. Rozwdowski. Live. Online. Registration Required. January 27, 2021, 4:00pm.

An Essay Towards a Natural History of William Bartram’s Drawings

Elizabeth Athens (Assistant Professor of Art History)

with a response by Helen M. Rozwadowski (Professor of History, UConn)

Wednesday, January 27, 2021, 4:00pm (Online—Register here)

The act of drawing or “figuring” provided the American naturalist William Bartram (1739–1823) a model for understanding the natural world. Bartram saw figuring as a series of reciprocal interactions among natural world, artist, and audience, a view that coincided with his belief in a dynamic, responsive cosmos. Though the term ecology is of nineteenth-century origin, the study of the natural world’s relationships emerges in the eighteenth, and this presentation examines the affinity between Bartram’s graphic work and an interconnected natural world. In particular it considers how his drawings—by calling attention to their construction through visual quotations, jostling perspectives, and unusual flourishes—presented a new mode of natural history representation, one in which they function as extensions of the natural world’s own organic processes and patterns.

Elizabeth Athens is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Connecticut, where she teaches courses on museum studies, histories of collecting, and material culture. She previously served as part of the research team for the History of Early American Landscape Design database at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington, D.C., and as the American art curator of the Worcester Art Museum. Her current research centers on the work of the American artist-naturalist William Bartram (1739–1823), whose efforts helped redirect the taxonomic focus of eighteenth-century natural history to the study of lived relationships. This project examines Bartram’s unusual graphic practice and how his natural history drawings helped articulate such a shift.

Founder of the University of Connecticut’s Maritime Studies program, Helen M. Rozwadowski teaches history of science and environmental history as well as interdisciplinary and experiential maritime-related courses. She has spent her career encouraging scholars and students to join in writing the history of interconnections between oceans and people. Her book on the 19th-century scientific and cultural discovery of the depths, Fathoming the Ocean: The Discovery and Exploration of the Deep Sea, won the History of Science Society’s Davis Prize for best book directed to a wide public audience. In The Sea Knows No Boundaries she explores the history of 20th-century marine sciences that support international fisheries and marine environmental management. Recently she has co-edited Soundings and Crossings: Doing Science at Sea 1800-1970, one of several volumes that have established the field of history of oceanography. Her recent book, Vast Expanses: A History of the Oceans (Reaktion Books, 2018), which won the Sharon Harris Book Award from UCHI in 2019, has come out in a Korean edition in 2019 and a Chinese edition in 2020.

Registration is required for the event.

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057.

Statement Condemning the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol

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Truth matters. As yesterday’s horrifying events illustrate, this is not an abstract principle, but a core practical commitment of democratic governance. When we ignore reality, dismiss the evidence, or simply encourage those who do so, we eat away at the foundations of our republic.

The value of truth in a democracy consists, most fundamentally, in the value of its pursuit through inquiry—the pursuit of the political facts, historical and literary context, and the basic principles of ethics—and through the different forms of knowledge and artistic expression cultivated in the humanities. In better times we often leave these things unsaid; but in times of crisis, they must be said, with fortitude and clarity.

We at the UConn Humanities Institute proudly reaffirm our commitment to these values—to justice, to democracy, to truth.

Michael P. Lynch
Director, UConn Humanities Institute
UConn Humanities Institute Logo, Future of Truth Logo

Announcing NEHC Faculty of Color Working Group Mellon Fellowships

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With the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the New England Humanities Consortium’s Faculty of Color Working Group is pleased to accept applications for two (2) Mellon Faculty Fellowships in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences for the 2021–2022 academic year. The fellowship is intended for full-time faculty members from historically disadvantaged racial groups or those whose projects specifically confront institutional blocks for BIPOC faculty. The Mellon Faculty of Color Fellowship program seeks to relieve scholars of institutional hindrances by providing resources to reduce many of the barriers that make it difficult for faculty of color to research, think, and engage in their transformative work at their home institutions. These fellowships will provide resources that will allow them the time and space to focus on their scholarship away from the typical demands levied on their own campuses. Fellows will spend their fellowship year at a NEHC host institution with opportunities to interact with a broad and relevant intellectual community. Applicants are limited to faculty from NEHC member institutions, including the University of Connecticut, and are due February 1, 2021. Applications must be submitted via Interfolio.
 
For more details, see the call for applications.

Call for Applications: 2021–22 UCHI Faculty of Color Working Group Fellowship

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With the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the University of Connecticut, UCHI, together with the Faculty of Color Working Group of the New England Humanities Consortium, is pleased to accept applications for the UCHI/FOCWG Faculty Fellowship for the 2021-2022 academic year. The fellowship is intended for full-time UConn faculty members from historically disadvantaged minority groups and/or those whose projects specifically confront institutional blocks for BIPOC faculty.

Criteria for successful applicants include, but are not limited to: quality of research proposal; strength of reference letters; and articulation within the proposal of how this project can contribute to a larger support network for faculty of color in the region and/or to understanding and addressing impediments to success for BIPOC faculty in higher education.

Applications for the UCHI/FOCWG Fellowship are due on February 1st and should be submitted through UCHI’s regular fellowship application portal on Interfolio. All submission requirements are identical to regular UCHI Humanities fellowships; and applicants will be assessed by the same interdisciplinary review panel of outside academics. When applying, we ask that you indicate on the application form that you would like to be considered for the UCHI/FOCWG Fellowship. Indicating that you would like to be considered for the UCHI/FOCWG Fellowship does not preclude you from being offered a UCHI Fellowship—indeed, any application for the UCHI/FOCWG fellowship is considered as an application for a standard UCHI fellowship.

UCHI/FOCWG Fellows are full members of the UCHI fellowship class and have all the same benefits and responsibilities. See here for fellowship application materials and further information on the fellowship program.

APPLY NOW

Call for Applications: 2021–2022 UCHI Fellowships

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Where can the humanities take us? UCHI invites applications for its annual residential fellowships. Apply by February 1, 2021.

UCHI is very excited to announce that applications are now open for our 2021–2022 residential fellowships. Our fellowships include a stipend, office space, and all the benefits of a Research I university. Just as important, we provide community and time for scholars to write, argue, engage, and create.

UCHI offers residential fellowships in three categories: UConn Dissertation Research Fellowships, UConn Faculty Fellowships, and Visiting Scholar Fellowships. UConn Faculty fellowships include the UCHI Faculty of Color Working Group fellowship, intended for full-time UConn faculty members from historically disadvantaged minority groups and/or those whose projects specifically confront institutional blocks for BIPOC faculty.

Qualified applicants in all three fellowship categories are invited to apply via Interfolio by February 1, 2021 at 11:59 pm. Each fellowship’s application page provides a position description, qualifications, and application requirements. Applicants to each position receive a free Interfolio Dossier account and can send all application materials, including confidential letters of recommendation, free of charge.

Apply for a UConn Dissertation Research Fellowship

Apply for a UConn Faculty Fellowship

Apply for a Visiting Scholar Fellowship

For more details on our fellowships see our Become a Fellow page and read our FAQ. If you have any questions, please write to us at uchi@uconn.edu.

UCHI Stands in Solidarity with the UVM Humanities Center

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Our NEHC partners at the University Vermont Humanities Center have released the following statement on the recently proposed cuts to Humanities programs at UVM. UCHI stands with the UVM Humanities Center in opposing these proposed cuts and in calling for a recognition of the crucial importance of the humanities.

The UVM Humanities Center decries, in the strongest possible terms, the proposal to eliminate humanities departments and programs in the College of Arts and Sciences. This proposal does not reflect a “comprehensive commitment to a liberal arts education” (UVM Vision statement), and it undermines the value of the Humanities for our students, faculty, state, and status as Vermont’s flagship land grant university.

As Vermont Congressman Justin Morrill—architect of the land-grant university system— once expressed, humanities are not marginal to the land grant university but lie at its very heart: “The fundamental idea was to offer an opportunity in every state for a liberal and larger education to larger numbers, not merely those destined to enter the sedentary professions, but to those needing higher instruction for the world’s business, for the industrial pursuits and professions of life.” For Morrill, the purpose of the university is not merely technical education; rather it is to create better citizens and strengthen the nation by enriching the human experience.

Through their teaching, research, and public engagement, the faculty of three humanities programs targeted for elimination—Religion, Classics, and Historic Preservation—as well as majors in various foreign languages targeted for elimination, have demonstrated that the Humanities help all students from across the University to:

    • Understand human experience across language, place, and time
    • Empathize with others
    • Think creatively and critically
    • Examine social problems related to race, gender, sex, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, class, and caste
    • Prioritize social justice and equality
    • Build skills in inquiry, writing and critical analysis, the so-called “soft-skills” that are in high demand in diverse careers

The proposal to eliminate these programs and majors based on an arbitrary measure like the number of majors is short-sighted and ignores the importance of these programs for the fulfilment of general education requirements for all students from across the university. Given that this proposal is patently about opening the door to cutting faculty positions, it egregiously ignores the contributions faculty in these programs make to Vermont through their public humanities work, consulting, and leadership in areas such as cultural heritage management, secondary education, teacher training, and humanities and arts programming throughout the state. UVM’s latest attempt to “engage” with Vermont would do well to recognize Humanities faculty are already deeply engaged in Vermont’s communities through a multitude of humanistic and artistic pursuits. Especially galling is the assault it represents on the accomplishments, productivity, and stature of the faculty who teach in these programs, whose contributions to UVM’s national and international reputation are substantial. We have been proud in the Humanities Center to provide direct support and awards to faculty in each of these programs.

Budgets are not apolitical, they are values statements. It is clear from the proposed budgetary cuts that the humanities are not valued at UVM. This is in spite of their inherent merit to our land grant institution, high enrollment courses that serve university mission, and excellent faculty. We question why we cannot invest university resources in academic programs and not bloated administrator salaries, or reform a budget model that systematically produces regular structural deficits to the academic unit that serves the greatest number and variety of students.

Sincerely,

Luis Vivanco, Director
Ilyse Morgenstein-Fuerst, Associate Director

Download a PDF of the statement.