Author: Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

Faculty Talk: Evelyn Simien on Historic U.S. Elections

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2024 Faculty Talk. "The Last Shall be First: Historic Candidates in US Elections." Professor of Political Science and Interim Director of Africana Studies, Evelyn Simien. Humanities Institute Conference Room, Homer Babbidge Library fourth floor, Feb 7, 3:30pm.

The Last Shall Be First: Historic Candidates in U.S. Elections

Evelyn Simien (Professor, Political Science, UConn)

Wednesday February 7, 2024, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend virtually

Evelyn Simien’s book project, “The Last Shall Be First: Historic Candidates in U.S. Elections,” will show that historic first candidates have long-standing effects on new segments of the American polity, whether they win or lose, their campaigns revitalize American democracy and legitimize our political institutions. Utilizing in-depth, mixed methods case studies of historic candidates at the local, state, and national levels, the book length project situates historic firsts in terms of their ability to restore confidence in a polarized nation by renewing faith in fair elections, inspiring civic engagement, and cultivating trust in government. These case studies are complemented by opinion data, voter turnout reports, election maps, textual analysis of campaign rhetoric, and content analysis of newspapers. The rich array of sources—photographs, speeches, interviews, and election maps—used for this project will take the form of a digital archive.

Evelyn M. Simien is professor of political science at the University of Connecticut. She is also Interim Director of the Africana Studies Institute at UConn. Simien received her B.A. in political science from Xavier University of Louisiana, along with her master’s degree and Ph.D. in political science from Purdue University. Simien is the author of two books Black Feminist Voices in Politics (State University of New York Press, 2006), and Historic Firsts: How Symbolic Empowerment Changes U.S. Politics (Oxford University Press, 2016), and editor of Gender and Lynching (Palgrave/Macmillan 2011) and Historic Firsts in U.S. Elections: Trailblazing Candidates (Routledge, 2022).

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.

Fellow’s Talk: Tracy Llanera on Misfits of Extremism

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2023–24 Fellow's Talk. The Misfits of Extremism: Brides, Moms, and Daughters. Assistant Professor of Philosophy Tracy Llanera, with a response by Jordan Camp. February 7, 12:15pm. Humanities Institute Conference Room, HBL Library 4th floor.

The Misfits of Extremism: Brides, Moms, and Daughters

Tracy Llanera (Assistant Professor, Philosophy, UConn)

with a response by Jordan T. Camp (American Studies, Trinity College)

Wednesday February 7, 2024, 12:15pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend virtually

While patriarchal hate and terror ideologies assign subordinative and domestic roles to women, contemporary research shows the women participate as political agents in Islamic terror and white supremacist movements. This situation raises complex issues about agency and political accountability. In debates on gender, extremism, and terrorism, for example, women are described either as merely having a “façade of agency” (Lahoud 2018) or as exercising “active agency” (Termeer & Duyvesteyn 2022). Both approaches are problematic: the former insinuates that women, encumbered by their oppressed gender status, are less blameworthy than men even if they follow the same directives; the latter, meanwhile, sidesteps the impact of hierarchical patriarchal dynamics, making men and women equal in terms of liability and blame.

In light of these two unsatisfactory approaches, I develop a more nuanced conception of women’s agency in patriarchal hate and terror groups in this talk. I offer a philosophical account of “women’s hate agency,” detailing its three enabling conditions: first, it is inspired by a ressentiment-fostering narrative perpetuated by their terrorist or hate group; second, the group licenses women to defy gender norms for expedient political action; and third, the group calls on women to perform special duties that bring them fame, praise, honor, and prestige as women. I conclude by linking this work with my UCHI book project, The Misfits of Extremism.

Tracy Llanera is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut-Storrs. She is author of Richard Rorty: Outgrowing Modern Nihilism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), co-author of A Defence of Nihilism (Routledge, 2021), and editor of Resilience and the Brown Babe’s Burden: Writings by Filipina Philosophers (Routledge, forthcoming). Llanera works at the intersection of social and political philosophy, philosophy of religion, feminist philosophy, and pragmatism, specializing on the topics of nihilism, extremism, conversion, and the politics of language and resilience. She is affiliated with the UConn Asian and Asian American Studies Institute and the UConn Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program. Llanera is also a core member of Women Doing Philosophy, a global feminist organization of Filipina philosophers.

Jordan T. Camp is an Associate Professor of American Studies and founding Co-Director of the Social Justice Institute at Trinity College, and a Visiting Fellow in the UConn Humanities Institute. He is the author of Incarcerating the Crisis: Freedom Struggles and the Rise of the Neoliberal State (University of California Press, 2016); co-editor (with Christina Heatherton) of Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter (Verso, 2016); and co-editor (with Laura Pulido) of the late Clyde Woods’ Development Drowned and Reborn: The Blues and Bourbon Restorations in Post-Katrina New Orleans (University of Georgia Press, 2017). He is the co-host and co-producer of the Conjuncture podcast and web series. He is currently working on a new book entitled, The Southern Question.

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.

Undergraduate Research Fellowship Information Session

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Undergraduate Research Fellowship Information Session. Online Event. February 2, 1:00pm.

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

February 2, 2023, 1:00pm
Live • Online • Registration required

Register

We are holding an information session for prospective applicants for the 2024–25 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.

Fellow’s Talk: Zehra Arat on Human Rights Norms in Turkey

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2023–24 UCHI Fellow's Talk. "Human Rights Norms in Turkey: A Historical Analysis of Political Party Programs," Professof of Political Science, UConn, Zehra Kabaskal Arat, with a response by Tracy Llanera. January 31, 12:15pm. Humanities Institute Conference Room, Homer Babbidge Library 4th floor.

Human Rights Norms in Turkey: A Historical Analysis of Political Party Programs

Zehra Kabasakal Arat (Professor, Political Science, UConn)

with a response by Tracy Llanera (Philosophy, UConn)

Wednesday January 31, 2024, 12:15pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend virtually

Starting with the Charter of the United Nations (UN), which included the promotion of human rights as a goal of the organization, international human rights norms have been advancing. The current studies on human rights norms tend to explore how international norms have been developed and how they have been adopted or challenged by states. The tendency is to treat international human rights norms as external to societies, especially to developing countries. Since some elements of the contemporary international human rights norms have existed in practically all societies (usually articulated as duties), the project is designed with an interest in examining human rights norm development at the intersection of domestic and international politics. It involves a longitudinal study of Türkiye—a country that has been engaged in the UN and European human rights regimes since their beginnings but maintained an inconsistent and problematic human rights record. Focusing on political parties, which play critical roles in agenda setting and policy formulation but neglected in human rights scholarship, it examines the articulation of human rights norms in political party programs issued since the 1920s.

Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat is Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut. She studies human rights, with an emphasis on women’s rights, as well as processes of democratization, globalization, and development. In addition to her scholarship, she has been active in professional organizations in various capacities (e.g., Founding President, Human Rights Section of APSA); she has served on the editorial boards of several journals and book series and is currently the editor of the book series “Power and Human Rights” by the Lynne Rienner Publishers. Her work is recognized by several awards, including the APSA Award of Distinguished Scholar in Human Rights (2010). She is also engaged in human rights activism and a founding member of the Women’s Platform for Equality. For more information, please see https://polisci.uconn.edu/person/zehra-arat/

Tracy Llanera is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut-Storrs. She is author of Richard Rorty: Outgrowing Modern Nihilism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), co-author of A Defence of Nihilism (Routledge, 2021), and editor of Resilience and the Brown Babe’s Burden: Writings by Filipina Philosophers (Routledge, forthcoming). Llanera works at the intersection of social and political philosophy, philosophy of religion, feminist philosophy, and pragmatism, specializing on the topics of nihilism, extremism, conversion, and the politics of language and resilience. She is affiliated with the UConn Asian and Asian American Studies Institute and the UConn Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program. Llanera is also a core member of Women Doing Philosophy, a global feminist organization of Filipina philosophers.

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.

Fellow’s Talk: Victor Zatsepine on the Eurasian Borderland

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2023–24 UCHI Fellow's Talk. "To the Gobi Desert: Exploration and Changing Political Landscape in the Eurasian Borderlan." Associate Professor, History and Asian and Asian American Studies, UConn, Victor Zatsepine. with a response by Alexander Diener. January 24, 12:15pm. UCHI Conference Room, Homer Babbidge Library, 4-209.

To the Gobi Desert: Exploration and Changing Political Landscape in the Eurasian Borderland

Victor Zatsepine (Associate Professor, History & AAASI, UConn)

with a response by Alexander Diener (Geography, University of Kansas)

Wednesday January 24, 2024, 12:15pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend virtually

During the 1920s, many international explorers and scientists visited the border regions of the newly established Republic of China, Mongolian People’s Republic and Soviet Russia. These expeditions took place at a time of profound sociopolitical change in this region and of growing international rivalry. This talk analyzes the role of these expeditions in transmitting ideas, education, and scientific knowledge about the Gobi Desert. It also questions the purpose of these expeditions, as well as the relationship between modern archaeology, geology and paleontology and Eurasian politics.

This talk is part of my larger project “Unsettling the Sino-Mongol-Russian Borderlands” which investigates the dramatic transformation of the borderland communities between the emerging nation-states of China, Mongolia and Soviet Russia in the early decades of the twentieth century.

Victor Zatsepine is an associate professor appointed jointly to the Department of History and the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute at UConn. His research is focused on the history of modern China, the Russian Far East, and Northeast Asian frontier lands. He embraces transnational and trans-regional approaches to examine the movement of people, ideas, and goods across borders. After the publication of Beyond the Amur: Frontier Encounters Between China and Russia, 1850–1930 (UBC Press, 2017), he has continued research on East Asian frontiers, regionalism, border towns, the Chinese and Russian diaspora, migration and Western Imperialism. Over the past decade he has presented his research at major international conferences and workshops and in published articles.

Alexander Diener is a Professor of Geography at the University of Kansas. His interests include borders, urban landscape, place attachment, axial development, migration, and diaspora. He possesses area studies expertise in Central Eurasia and Northeast Asia, having worked extensively in Russian borderlands. Alex has authored and edited nine books, most recently Borders: A Very Short Introduction (2023), The Power of Place in Place Attachment (2023), Invisible Borders: Geographies of Power, Mobility, and Belonging (2022), and Cities as Power: Urban Space, Place, and National Identity (2019). His work has been funded by the NSF, SSRC, IREX, AAG, and the MacArthur Foundation. He has held fellowships at the Kennan Institute of the Wilson Center, the American University of Central Asia, Mongolia National University, George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, Harvard University’s Davis Center, and Fulbright’s Regional Research Scholar for Central Asia. At UCHI, Alex is writing The Middle of Somewhere, a book about the extensive but understudied effects of place attachment on the human condition.

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.

Fellow’s Talk: Richard Ashby Wilson on Racial Violence and the Law

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Historical Consciousness, Racial Violence, and the Law

Richard Wilson (Professor, Law, Anthropology, and Human Rights, UConn)

with a response by Birgit Brander Rasmussen (English, Binghamton University SUNY)

Wednesday January 17, 2024, 12:15pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

In the aftermath of 2020 and nationwide Black Lives Matter protests, states and municipalities in the United States implemented a range of new policies to reform the relationship between law enforcement and historically marginalized groups. These measures acknowledge the role of the law in racial oppression and seek to reorient policing towards protecting groups from hate crimes, or crimes motivated in whole or in part by bias or bigotry. This talk draws on Bourdieu’s notion of the “juridical field” to evaluate the implications of such reform initiatives for how actors in the criminal justice system address the history of racially motivated violence and the implications for the enforcement of hate crimes.

Dr. Richard Ashby Wilson is Board of Trustees Professor of Law and Anthropology and Gladstein Chair of Human Rights. He is a scholar of transitional justice and his recent scholarship has focused on hate speech and incitement in international and U.S. law. His books include The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa, Writing History in International Criminal Trials, and Incitement on Trial. He is a member of the Hate Crimes Advisory Council of Connecticut and he is writing a book about the challenges in reporting, investigating, and prosecuting bias-motivated crimes in the United States.

Birgit Brander Rasmussen is Associate Professor in the English Department at Binghamton University (SUNY), located on unceded Onandaga land. She wrote the award-winning book Queequeg’s Coffin: Indigenous Literacies and Early American Literature and co-edited The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness.

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.

NEW DATE: Fellowships and Grants Virtual Retreat

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The Faculty Success Initiative Presents: Fellowships and Grants Virtual Retreat. Zoom Event. December 15, 2:00–400pm.

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.

The Faculty Success Initiative presents:

Fellowships and Grants Virtual Retreat

December 15, 2023, 2:00pm
Live • Online • Registration required

Register

Take a break from grading and get your fellowship/grant applications in shape for winter deadlines!

Please join us for a collective writing retreat dedicated to helping faculty and graduate students who are planning to apply for fellowships and grants this winter.

The event will begin with a brief introduction to resources that can aid you in researching opportunities and preparing materials.

We will then have two brief (25 minute) writing sprints, with one 20 minute breakout session in which people can discuss their projects and ask questions.

Fellow’s Talk: Jordan T. Camp on the Geography of Fascism

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Southern Questions: W.E.B. Du Bois, Antonio Gramsci, and the Geography of Fascism. Jordan Camp, Associate Professor of American Studies, Trinity College. With a response by Victor Zatsepine.

Southern Questions: W.E.B. Du Bois, Antonio Gramsci, and the Geography of Fascism

Jordan T. Camp (Associate Professor, American Studies, Trinity College)

with a response by Victor Zatsepine (History, UConn)

Wednesday, November 15, 2023, 12:15pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend virtually

In this talk, Jordan T. Camp establishes a link between W.E.B. Du Bois and Antonio Gramsci through their respective approaches to the “southern question.” Drawing on Du Bois’ insights about the overthrow of Reconstruction and fascism in the United States and Antonio Gramsci’s writing about the emergence of fascism in post-World War I Italy, Camp traces an alternative geography of fascism and an alternate trajectory of anti-fascist political theory. He demonstrates how both theorists deployed symbolic, geographic, and ideological representations of “the South” in their writings. He further illuminates how they both treated the “southern question” relationally and illustrate the need for comparisons between racist and fascist nationalisms in different historical-geographical contexts. In linking Du Bois and Gramsci, Camp illustrates their ongoing relevance for understanding reactionary populist appeals to racism, nationalism, and xenophobia. In doing so, he suggests how their writing can be “translated” in order to confront the southern question in our own time.

Jordan T. Camp is an Associate Professor of American Studies and founding Co-Director of the Social Justice Institute at Trinity College, and a Visiting Fellow in the UConn Humanities Institute. He is the author of Incarcerating the Crisis: Freedom Struggles and the Rise of the Neoliberal State (University of California Press, 2016); co-editor (with Christina Heatherton) of Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter (Verso, 2016); and co-editor (with Laura Pulido) of the late Clyde Woods’ Development Drowned and Reborn: The Blues and Bourbon Restorations in Post-Katrina New Orleans (University of Georgia Press, 2017). He is the co-host and co-producer of the Conjuncture podcast and web series. He is currently working on a new book entitled, The Southern Question.

Victor Zatsepine is an associate professor appointed jointly to the Department of History and the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute at UConn. His research is focused on the history of modern China, the Russian Far East, and Northeast Asian frontier lands. He embraces transnational and trans-regional approaches to examine the movement of people, ideas, and goods across borders. After the publication of Beyond the Amur: Frontier Encounters Between China and Russia, 1850–1930 (UBC Press, 2017), he has continued research on East Asian frontiers, regionalism, border towns, the Chinese and Russian diaspora, migration and Western Imperialism. Over the past decade he has presented his research at major international conferences and workshops and in published articles.

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.

Applying to Graduate School

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Applying to Graduate School. November 10, 2:00pm. Bradley Simpson (Director of Graduate Studies, History); Victoria Ford Smith (Director of Graduate Studies, English); Lauren Terbush (Director of Admission, School of Law).

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.

Applying to Graduate School

with David Richards (Human Rights, UConn)
Victoria Ford Smith (English, UConn)
and Lauren Terbush (School of Law, UConn)

November 10, 2023, 2:00pm
Live • Online • Registration required

Register

Thinking about graduate study in the humanities or social sciences? Come learn from faculty who make the decisions about admitting students into graduate programs in English, Human Rights, and the Law School about what they look for in applicants, and what mistakes you should avoid. There will be ample time for questions.

This is an Honors Event. Categories: Career, Professional, & Personal Development.
#UHLevent10662

David Richards is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Human Rights, as well as Associate Professor of Political Science, at the University of Connecticut.

Victoria Ford Smith is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in English at the University of Connecticut.

Lauren Terbush is Director of Admissions at the University of Connecticut School of Law.

Fellow’s Talk: Ana María Díaz-Marcos on Ernestina G. Fleischman

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UCHI Fellow's Talk 2023–24. Recovering Ernestina G Fleischman's Life and Work. Professor of Spanish Literatures, LCL, Ana Maria Diaz Marcos, with a response by Oscar Guerra. November 8, 12:15pm. Humanities Institute Conference Room. Homer Babbidge Library, fourth floor.

Recovering Ernestina G. Fleischman’s Life and Work

Ana María Díaz-Marcos (Professor, LCL, UConn)

with a response by Oscar Guerra (DMD, UConn)

Wednesday, November 8, 2023, 12:15pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend virtually

Why do so many women vanish from history after leading exceptional lives? Ernestina González Fleischman (1896–1976) is an emblematic case that illustrates the erasure of women´s agency and achievements from historical accounts.

Ernestina led an awe-inspiring life marked by political activism, international visibility, and intellectual relevance. She was a librarian, a Spanish teacher, a writer, and an antifascist leader who tirelessly engaged in public activities. Her voice became a staple for the Spanish-speaking community in New York who listened to her nightly radio program Voice of fighting Spain during the forties. She published in at least three New York-based Spanish newspapers, and delivered public speeches on topics of human rights, antifascism, feminism, anti-imperialism, and peace efforts. Her highly international profile illustrates women’s transnational protests at their best, as she actively participated in women’s antifascist networks in USA, Spain, France and Mexico. It is difficult to explain how such a prominent figure in the arena of the anti-fascist Hispanic hubs in the United States and Spain has been wiped out from history.

This talk documents the archival research that has made possible the recovery of her legacy and her writings and will focus on crucial moments in her biography: a personal tragedy during the Spanish Civil War, two exiles, her leadership and fierce activism in New York arena of civil rights, and the investigation and trial by the Committee on Un-American activities.

Ana María Díaz-Marcos is a Professor of Spanish Literature at the Department of Literatures, Cultures and Languages. Her research interests include Spanish literature and theater, feminism and gender studies, and Hispanic antifascism in the press. She has published a monograph on representations of fashion in modern Spanish literature entitled The Age of Silk (2006). Her book Thinking out of the Box: Spanish Writers and the Quest for Emancipation (2013) examines the rising of a feminist consciousness in Spain. She is the editor of an open-access anthology of plays written by contemporary Spanish women playwrights: Escenarios de crisis: dramaturgas españolas en el nuevo milenio (2018). Her latest Digital Humanities projects include a bilingual exhibition about the history of the antifascist newspaper La voz (1937-1939) that was published in New York, a collection of articles from that newspaper that illustrate the intersections of Pan-Hispanic feminism and antifascism in the thirties, and a collection of cartoons from the press entitled “Sketches of Harlem” by Puerto Rican artist José Valdés Cadilla, that is on display at CUNY this Fall.

Oscar Guerra is an Emmy® award-winning director, researcher, and educator. He is an Associate Professor of Film and Video at the University of Connecticut and a producer at PBS FRONTLINE. Dr. Guerra’s focus is storytelling that promotes critical thinking and social investment. He aims to produce media that provides a way for underrepresented groups to share and disseminate counterstories, contradict dominant and potentially stereotypical narratives, and strengthen their voices and identities. Dr. Guerra’s career spans the spectrum of television environments, music, multimedia production, documentaries for social change, promotional video, immersive media, and vast international experience.

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.