Author: Siavash Samei

You Should…See: Shoplifters (Françoise Dussart, UConn-Anthropology)

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Cover photo of the five members of the household in the movie ShopliftersYou Should take the time to watch Shoplifters by Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda who is often compared to Kurosawa, Bergman, and other great humanists of the cinema.

Shoplifters—inspired by a local news story—is the best movie I have seen in 2018–2019. And yes, I watch a lot of movies!

Shoplifters is a subtle Dickensian tale in a contemporary modern crowded Tokyo.

Shoplifters is about five members of a household: Osamu, Nobuyo, Shota, Aki a-k-a Sayaka, and Grandma who adopt a starving little girl Yuri.

Shoplifters is about the kinship bonds we develop with strangers we chose to love.

Shoplifters is about empathy, generosity, compulsive kindness and incredibly moving moments of joy.

Shoplifters is about trauma, fear of poverty and coming-of-age.

Shoplifters is about three generations of Invisible people in a cold and judgmental capitalist world.

Shoplifters is about people nursing secrets and lies which should never be revealed.

Shoplifters reveals a paradox that despite shoplifting, cheating and coning, Osamu, Nobuyo, Shota, Aki and Grandma create a happier life for little Yuri than her violent law-abiding parents.

Shoplifters is a magical film with overwhelming endings.

Oh, and You Should see Shoplifters because it requires reading subtitles…

– Françoise Dussart
Professor of Anthropology & WGSS
University of Connecticut

 

Photo of Françoise Dussart

Who is Françoise Dussart? Françoise is a professor of anthropology and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Uconn. Trained in France and Australia, her specialties in social anthropology include Australian Aboriginal society and culture (as well as other Fourth World Peoples), iconography and visual systems, various expressions of gender, ritual and social organization, health and citizenship. She is currently curating the very first major presentation of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts from Australia in Canada, at the Musée de la Civilisation in Quebec City.

Alexis Boylan Lead Author of New Book on Feminism and Mad Max

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University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) Director of Academic Affairs, Alexis Boylan, is the lead author of a new book entitled Furious Feminisms: Alternative Routes on Mad Max: Fury Road (University of Minnesota Press, 2019). The book uses the feminist credentials of George Miller’s 2015 Mad Max: Fury Road film to ask “what is possible, desirable, or damaging in theorizing feminism in the contested landscape of the twenty-first century.” The authors tackle this issue from four different disciplinary angles: art history, American literature, disability studies, and sociology. Other authors of the book are Anna Mae Duane,  associate professor of English at UConn and a UCHI Class of 2016-2017 Fellow; Michael Gill, an associate professor of disability studies in the department of Cultural Foundations of Education at Syracuse University; and Barbara Gurr, associate professor in residence in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at UConn. 

 

Cover the book surrounded by the headshots of the authors: Alexis Boylan, Anna Mae Duane, Michael Gill, and Barbara Gurr

 

Alexis Boylan Reviews Two Books on Art, Creativity, and AI

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BoylanUniversity of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) Director of Academic Affairs, Alexis Boylan, is the author of a recent article in the Boston Review that examines two new books on creativity, innovation, and artificial intelligence: The Creativity Code: Art and Innovation in the Age of AI (Belknap Press) by Marcus du Sautoy and The Artist in the Machine: The World of AI_Powered Creativity (MIT Press) by Arthur I. Miller. These books “contend that AI is nothing to fear because humans are so much better at being creative than are machines.” Boylan, also an associate professor of art and art history at UConn, emphasizes both books’ failure to transcend hegemonic ideas of human artistic expression. Both books center their argument on a largely white and male definition of creativity and genius, dismissing altogether the contribution of feminist and black aesthetics, for example, to the totality of the human artistic potential and output:

“Both books share a kind of a priori acceptance…, that computers and machines have already displaced a certain kind of person from labor, society, and community. That’s not a question, it is the reality that these books start from. It’s also not what they see to be the problem: the problem for the authors only arises when AI threatens those who have historically controlled capital and historical narratives, and whose ideas of creativity, genius, innovation, and evolution have reigned supreme. These fears about AI, therefore, stand in for the dread of a certain cultural elite, who have weaponized creativity in a broader neoliberal narrative about human worth—and who now fear the same will be done to them. Perhaps then we should be forced to watch AI blossom and shine; maybe we deserve to be taken over with another kind of creativity.”

 

 

UCHI Director Lynch Honored at the BOT Distinguished Professor’s Reception

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The University of Connecticut Humanities Institute director, Michael Lynch, has been officially named a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor at UConn. This award is the highest honor that UConn bestows upon those faculty who have demonstrated excellence in teaching, research, and service. Michael Lynch and the other recipients were honored during a reception hosted by the Board of Trustees earlier in December. Other recipients this year included Emmanouil N. Anagnostou – Civil and Environmental Engineering and Cathy Schlund-Vials – English and Asian/Asian American Studies.

UCHI Team Holiday Book Recommendations

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Winter holidays are arguably one of the best times of the year to get cozy with a book or three, free of the hullabaloo of the academic year. Our team at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) has a list of book recommendations for your holiday reading needs. We got it all: old and new, fiction, and non-fiction, novel and memoir. So get yourself some comfy clothes, pour yourself a drink, find the nearest cushiony couch, and enjoy. Happy holidays!

 

Cover the Recommended Books

 

Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World (2018) by Meredith Broussard…Why? It spells out very clearly, and explains expertly (Broussard is a data journalist and former software developer), something many of us have felt at one point or another about algorithms, artificial intelligence, and computers in general: they’re terrific at certain things, terrible at a lot of very basic and very important things.

Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability (2017) by Sunaura Taylor…Why? Her writing is smart, devastating, funny, and ultimately the hope we need for 2020.

Becoming (2018) by Michell Obama…Why? Most politicians and public figures are or seem out of touch, and many write memoirs to set up the next step in their political ambitions. Obama’s memoir is far from that; in it you will find a deeply and genuinely human story filled with successes and failures; struggles, determinations, and yes, at times strokes of luck.

Behold America: The Entangled History of “America First” and “American Dream” (2018) by Sarah Churchwell…Why? It teaches us that the fight over America’s soul is still being fought over much of the same ground and offers a disturbing history of American fascism.

Come Tell Me How You Live (1946) by Agatha Christie…Why? Because beyond the orientalist attitude that is rampant in her writing, you will find in this archaeological memoir a simple and largely true description of life in a bygone era in parts of the Middle East that are now burning in the fires of war and sectarianism. She also provides a rare and honest window into her thinking, her fears, and her endeavors to overcome a sheltered worldview.

Conspiracy Theories (2019) by Quassim Cassam…Why? Because we really need to see conspiracy theories for what they are: the weapons of political ideologies.

Feel Free (2019) by Zadie Smith…Why? Reading Smith’s essays is therapeutic and uplifting, like listening to the smartest, most thoughtful person in the room after hearing too much from others. Feeling Free brings together many of her moving, insightful thoughts on Brexit, American politics, Facebook, Key & Peele, celebrity, and more.

From Folks Who Brought You the Weekend (2003) by Priscill Murolo…Why? Because it is incumbent upon every American to know the labor history of this country. At a time when collective bargaining rights are under attack and “union” has become a four-letter word, Murolo’s accessible prose brings to life the story of America’s ongoing class struggle; one that makes us root—more than ever before—for the humanitarian demands of teachers, automakers, and academic workers across the country.

The Hidden Life of Trees (2006) by Peter Wohlleben…Why? It explores the “secret” world of trees and their intricate social networks that go largely unnoticed.

The Idiot (2017) by Elif Batuman…Why? There are lots of funny observations and reflections on language and literature, email exchanges with a love interest, and passages from a Russian textbook. This novel/memoir, set in 1995, follows the first year of college—from moving into a dorm and shopping for classes, all the way to a summer teaching English in Hungary—for Selin, a character based on Batuman herself.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2017) by Iain Reid…Why? Reid’s debut novel is an ambitious and provocative psychological thriller based on the tension between the protagonist and his girlfriend…or so it seems. The jury is still out as to whether he pulls it off or not. Just read it and judge for yourself, preferably before the Netflix adaptation comes out in 2020.

Inside Out: A Memoir (2019) by Demi Moore…Why? You might roll your eyes at a movie star memoir, but it’s a deeply serious account of how we are shaped by parents and our parent’s parents, addiction, and mental illness. But then also about our capacity to grow and change, to be open and present.

The Metaphysical Club (2002) by Louis Menand…Why? It is an unparalleled account of the emergence of the American pragmatist movement and the 19th-century environment which shaped the thinkers involved.

The Mismeasure of Man (1996) by Stephen Jay Gould…Why? Because sadly his detailed study of the genesis and evolution of scientific racism still has currency in the 21st century.

The Missing Course: Everything They Never Taught You about College Teaching (2019) by David Gooblar…Why? I never paid much heed to “active learning” and other phrases one finds in dreary teaching philosophies, but The Missing Course has persuaded me otherwise. It has a good blend of Gooblar’s own personal experience, educational research, and immediately useful examples (like “naive tasks”), all written in an evenhanded way, without all the cant.

The Nickel Boys (2019) by Colson Whitehead… Why? Because the book is brilliant, because he was amazing when he came to UConn, because it’s a book that confronts trauma and memory and legacy in important ways.

Our Numbered Days (2015) by Neil Hilborn…Why? It is a moving collection of slam poetry which offers an important modern perspective on mental illness.

The Public and Its Problems (1991) by John Dewey…Why? Because everyone needs some hope for the holidays. Dewey here offers his famous defense of the idea of the democratic public sphere— the dream of participatory democracy— against Lippman’s famous criticisms.

UCHI Assistant Director Author of a New Book on the Romantic Period

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Yohei Igarashi, the Assistant Director of Digital Humanities and Media Studies at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) is the author of a new book entitled The Connected Condition: Romanticism and the Dream of Communication (Stanford University Press). According to the website of the publisher, “the Romantic poet’s intense yearning to share thoughts and feelings often finds expression in a style that thwarts a connection with readers. Yohei Igarashi addresses this paradox by reimagining Romantic poetry as a response to the beginnings of the information age. Data collection, rampant connectivity, and efficient communication became powerful social norms during this period. The Connected Condition argues that poets responded to these developments by probing the underlying fantasy: the perfect transfer of thoughts, feelings, and information, along with media that might make such communication possible.” Igarashi, also an associate professor of English at UConn, has authored many articles on Romanticism and poetry, including in New Literary History, Romantic Circles, and Studies in Romanticism; the latter of which received the Keats-Shelley Association of America annual essay prize in 2015.

Headshot of Yohei Igarashi along with a title of his book: The Connected Condition: Romanticism and the Dream of Communication

You Should…Read: Shaun Tan’s “The Arrival” (Victoria Ford Smith-UConn English)

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Cover the the book "The Arrival" with the title, author's name and an image featuring a man (an immigrant) with a hat and a suitcase staring down at a mouse-like creature Shaun Tan’s wordless graphic novel is peopled with creatures both realistic and fantastic and steeped in nostalgic, sepia light. However, the story it tells, of a man fleeing oppression to establish a home for his family in an unfamiliar city, is real and present. From the book’s opening spread, tiled with portraits based on Ellis Island photographs, the reader confronts the tension between human dignity and the social forces that alienate immigrants and refugees. Tan fosters empathy for his protagonist not only by depicting his past (a homeland strangled by snaking tentacles) but also by illuminating the mundane confrontations a newcomer navigates. Every encounter — an unfamiliar fruit, a new landlord, a request for directions — could unfold into connection or isolation.

You may have read The Arrival. It was published in 2006. But reading it today is a different matter. In Tan’s narrative, those fleeing violences find their new homes baffling, lonely, sometimes terrifying, but refuge is possible. Today, images of our borders — crying children enclosed in chain-link fences, asylum-seekers crammed in cages with only Mylar blankets for a bed — resemble less the hopeful city explored by Tan’s immigrant and more the haunted landscapes he desperately escapes. The Arrival will make you ache in a way that engenders action.

 

– Victoria Ford Smith
Associate Professor of English 
University of Connecticut

Headshot of Victoria Ford SmithWho is Victoria Ford Smith? Victoria Ford Smith is an Assistant Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in the English Department. She specializes in children’s literature; 19th- and 20th-century British literature and culture; authorship and collaboration; child agency and child-produced culture; Robert Louis Stevenson; and young adult literature. She is currently working on a book entitled How Children See: Vision and Childhood Around 1900.

Fellows Talk: Laura Godfrey on “Astonishment in Late Medieval English Literature”

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‘Being Wholly Out of Body’: Astonishment in Late Medieval English Literature

Laura Godfrey, Ph.D. Candidate in Medieval Studies, University of Connecticut
 December 4, 2019 – 4 to 5PM (UCHI Conference Room: Babbidge Library, 4th Floor South)

This talk brings together medieval medical and literary descriptions over overwhelming bodily experiences. In medieval literature, when a subject encounters a divine figure, they lose all physical and mental faculties, and after a period of stasis, these faculties are restored, often with heightened senses of perception or newly gained insight. Middle English texts describe this as astonishment, a phenomenon described in medieval medicine as a cerebral malady similar to paralysis or epilepsy. By enmeshing themselves in this cultural rhetoric of dramatic change, medieval authors use literary descriptions to extend the pathology of astonishment and to investigate the effects of this state on the mind and soul.

UCHI Fellows Talk by Laura Godfrey on December 4, 4-5PM at the UCHI Conference Room

 

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

UCHI and Global Affairs Announce Global Distinguished Humanities Fellowship

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In partnership with UConn Global Affairs, the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) is excited to announce its new Global Distinguished Humanities Fellowship (GDHF). In an effort to strengthen UConn’s commitment to the global community, this fellowship will sponsor an international faculty scholar to visit, learn from, and engage with UConn’s humanities departments.

At a moment when the humanities’ most urgent issues are expanding to touch all corners of the globe, this initiative seeks to foster international collaboration and highlight the importance of the humanities in creating a future that speaks globally to social justice, equity, and the environment. Through public lectures, faculty workshops, talks with graduate students, or other forms of engagement, the recipient of this award will challenge the UConn community to reassess the stakes of its scholarship and service, broadening the horizons of humanistic inquiry for global complexities.

Interested UConn faculty, with the endorsement of their department heads, can nominate an international faculty scholar to visit the UConn Storrs campus for no less than one week and no more than one month.During this time, the scholar will have an office space in UCHI and will be expected to participate actively in the UConn community. International faculty scholars must be from institutions with which UConn has an ongoing MOU (Memorandum of Understanding). Funding for this fellowship totals $10,000 and is expected to include the scholar’s honoraria, travel, and housing during their visit.

Applications are due by March 2, 2020 at 5 p.m. 

For more information and to submit an application, visit the fellowship’s webpage.

Fellows Talk: Jessica Strom on Adriano Lemmi and Italian Unification

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Financing Revolution: Adriano Lemmi and the Struggle for Italian Unification

Jessica Strom, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Connecticut
 November 20, 2019 – 4 to 5PM (UCHI Conference Room: Babbidge Library, 4th Floor South)

Jessica’s work explores Italian merchant Adriano Lemmi’s (1822–1906) position in the clandestine networks that funded radical nationalist leaders, military actions, and political newspapers during Italy’s mid-nineteenth century struggle for unification and political independence known as the Risorgimento. Lemmi played a critical role in fundraising efforts during the Risorgimento and became a key figure in the radical nationalist movement. By looking at a different type of revolutionary leader, Jessica’s project moves beyond ideals or outcomes to illuminate the everyday experiences of Italian Unification.Her talk will discuss how Lemmi helped to foster an alliance between Italian leader Giuseppe Mazzini and Hungarian nationalist Lajos Kossuth in the early 1850s. In particular she will address Lemmi’s crucial role in plans to free Kossuth from imprisonment in the Ottoman Empire and in subsequent efforts to acquire weapons from the United States to support nationalist military initiatives.

Strom Talk Poster