Two Talks by Distinguished National Phi Beta Kappa Scholar Ricardo Padrón

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A lecture from a distinguished National Phi Beta Kappa Scholar sponsored by Phi Beta Kappa. The Location of China: Spanish Encounters with the Middle Kingdom, 1521–1621. Ricardo Padron. Professor of Spanish, University of Virginia. November 3, 2022, 4:00pm. UCHI Conference Room.

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.

A lecture from a distinguished National Phi Beta Kappa Scholar sponsored by Phi Beta Kappa:

The Location of China: Spanish Encounters with the Middle Kingdom, 1521–1621

Ricardo Padrón

November 3, 2022, 4:00pm
Homer Babbidge Library, Humanities Institute Conference Room

This event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning. Register to attend virtually.

Spain’s colonization of the Philippine Islands led to an encounter with Ming China that was somewhat different from those experienced by the Portuguese and the Jesuits, one that generated questions about the location of China both in the geography of the globe and in the emerging hierarchy of the world’s cultures, as imagined from Europe. Were the Chinese as civilized as they seemed to be? Or were they just another version of the “barbarian” countries that the Spanish had already conquered in Mexico and Peru? What did it mean to be civilized anyway, and how could one tell? In this lecture, I introduce this little-known episode in the history of early modern European, arguing that it was the nature of Chinese government, not religion, that proved to be crucial.

In addition to the talk sponsored by Phi Beta Kappa, Ricardo Padrón will be giving a talk hosted by UVA’s Institute of the Humanities & Global Cultures

The Indies of the Setting Sun: How Early Modern Spain Mapped the Far East as the Transpacific West

Ricardo Padrón

November 4, 2022, 10:00–11:30am
Homer Babbidge Library, Humanities Institute Conference Room

This event will also be livestreamed. Register to attend virtually.

The Indies of the Setting Sun: How Early Modern Spain Mapped the Far East as the Transpacific West (Chicago 2020) examines the place of Pacific and Asia in the Spanish concept of “the Indies.” Padrón’s research for this book has taken him to China, Japan, and the Philippines, and has been sponsored by U.Va.’s Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation, Arts & Sciences at U.Va., and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Ricardo Padrón is a specialist in the literature and culture of the early modern Hispanic world who has published extensively on questions of empire, literature, cartography, and the geopolitical imagination. His 2004 book, The Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature and Empire in Early Modern Spain, has become a touchstone for the study of early modern Hispanic cartography. His recent monograph, The Indies of the Setting Sun: How Early Modern Spain Mapped the Far East as the Transpacific West (2020) challenges established narratives of “the invention of America” by looking at the various ways that sixteenth century Spaniards attempted to imagine the New World and Asia as connected spaces. His work has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is currently serving on the Board of Directors of the Renaissance Society of America.

SEWing Circle: Neftalí Villanueva Fernández on Crossed Disagreements

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The Social Epistemology Working Group Presents a SEWing circle workshop: Crossed disagreements: semantical and epistemological issues. Neftalí Villanueva Fernández, Professor of Philosophy University of Granada.October 6, 2020, 2:00pm. UCHI conference room.

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 Social Epistemology Working Group presents:

A SEWing Circle Workshop

Crossed Disagreements: Semantical and Epistemological Issues

Neftalí Villanueva Fernández

November 1, 2022, 2:00pm
Homer Babbidge Library, Humanities Institute Conference Room

This event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning. Register to attend virtually.

Crossed disagreements are instances of public discourse where the parties involved give clear signs of conceiving the debate under different lights. One might be thinking of the dispute in factual terms, for example, while the other might be taking the dispute to be one of a normative nature. An overwhelming presence of these disagreements can be linked to the rise of polarization. Because of its connection with polarization, they can be identified as forms of political propaganda. The purpose of this talk is to reflect on two different questions: 1. Do crossed disagreements stand in the way of knowledge? 2. What kind of restrictions do crossed disagreements impose on a theory of meaning? We will also dwell on the connection between epistemological and semantical issues, both with respect to the past literature on disagreement, and the future research on the topic. We will argue for a “promiscuous” approach, one in which epistemological and semantical questions remain intertwined.

Neftalí Villanueva is Profesor Titular and Head of the Department of Philosophy I at the University of Granada in Spain. Most of his work focuses on applying the philosophy of language to classical questions in the history of philosophy and to political and social problems. He is currently Principal Investigator on three separate research projects on polarization and disagreement: “Contemporary Expressivisms and the Indispensability of the Normative Vocabulary: Scope and Limits of the Expressivist Hypothesis,” “Public Disagreements, Affective Polarization and Immigration in Andalusia,” and “Offensive language, Inverse Planning, and the ‘Abstract/Concrete’ Dissonance: New Proxies to Measure Affective Polarization.”

Picturing the Pandemic Exhibition Opening

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Exhibition Opening

Thursday, October 27th 5–7 p.m.
Downtown Library in Hartford

Register

Hartford Public Library and UConn are excited to host an opening reception for “Picturing the Pandemic: Images from the Pandemic Journaling Project,” the first public exhibition of photos and journal entries collected by the team at the Pandemic Journaling Project detailing the experience of ordinary people during COVID-19. Speakers include Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin; UConn President Radenka Maric; Jasmin Agosto, education and community outreach manager, Hartford Public Library; Michael Lynch, director of UConn’s Humanities Institute; Kathryn Libal, director of UConn’s Human Rights Institute; Ty Hughey, executive director of Haddam-Killingworth Youth and Family Services; Melina Das, 10th grader, Wethersfield High School; and UConn faculty and Picturing the Pandemic Co-Curators Alexis Boylan & Sarah Willen

Since its launch in May 2020, the Pandemic Journaling Project has given ordinary people a place to chronicle and preserve their pandemic experiences. Over the following two years, more than 1,800 people in 55 countries created nearly 27,000 individual journal entries—for themselves, and for the history books.

“After collecting photographs, audio recordings and written journal entries from people around the world for two and a half years, we’re honored and thrilled to be partnering with the Hartford Public Library in launching what we think is a quite unusual exhibition,” said Sarah S. Willen, co-founder of PJP and co-curator, together with fellow UConn Professor Alexis Boylan, of the exhibition. “Our PJP team often describes PJP as a form of grassroots, collaborative research and history-making. In this exhibition, we’re expanding that mission to show how all of us, no matter our age, background or life stage, can find strength, solidarity and maybe even healing in creative expression and in recording, and sharing, our stories.”

Select submissions from the project will be displayed at Hartford Public Library through December alongside a selection of images from the library’s Hartford 2020 collection, a collection of photographs by Hartford-based photographers Andy Hart, Jasmine Jones, and Ray Shaw that capture Hartford’s public sphere in 2020: protests, parks, buses, testing clinics and outdoor performances.

In addition to journal entries collected digitally, the project hosted a series of in-person programs this summer at Hartford Public Library locations across the city where children were encouraged to create art that captured their thoughts and feelings about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their daily lives. Selections from those programs will be displayed in the Children’s Department at the Downtown Library as well as at Hartford Public Library branches across the city.

“A core part of Hartford Public Library’s mission is providing resources to encourage individual exploration, as well as preserving and recording Hartford’s history,” said Hartford Public Library President and CEO Bridget E. Quinn. “We are proud to partner with the team at the Pandemic Journaling Project on this exhibition that not only chronicles a tumultuous time in our collective history, but hopefully sparks conversation about claiming our voices, learning from others and creating meaningful change in the world, as well as inspiring others to share their stories.”

The opening reception at the Downtown Library will include remarks from the exhibition curators, as well as from project participants. Refreshments will be served and guests will be invited to view the exhibition that has been installed throughout the library.

Future public exhibitions of Pandemic Journaling Project materials are planned at Providence Public Library in Rhode Island; the Mark Twain Center for Transatlantic Relations in Heidelberg, Germany; and the Centro de Estudios de Género, el Colegio de México in Mexico City, Mexico.

For more information about the Pandemic Journaling Project visit www.pandemicjournalingproject.org. To register for the event on October 27th visit www.bit.ly/PJPatHPL.

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The Political Theory Workshop Presents: Erin Pineda

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THE POLITICAL THEORY WORKSHOP PRESENTS

“Displays of Force Black Rebellion and the Spectacular Violence of Police”

Erin Pineda, Government, Smith College
with commentary by Bianka Adamatti, Political Science, UConn
October 17, 2022 from 12:15–1:30pm, Oak 438 and Zoom.

“The whole world is watching.” Perhaps no phrase better encapsulates our hopes for what might be politically possible when the ordinary violence of police becomes an extraordinary public spectacle. But what is the shape of the world that is watching, and what is the political work performed by such a spectacle within it? This paper interrogates the spectacle of police violence against Black rebellion as an ambivalent multiplicity: a set of complex displays and encounters that solicit a variety of affective responses and inaugurate contradictory political possibilities. Fed through the logics of white supremacy, the scene of the “protest” is never fully free from the scene of the “riot”; the victims of the violence are also readily interpretable as aggressors; and the retaliatory and repressive violence of policing invites not just moral outrage but also rationalization, distancing, and eager identification with cruelty.

With generous support from the UConn Humanities Institute.

Questions? Email jane.gordon@uconn.edu

Fellow’s Talk: Yuhan Liang on Value Conflicts in the Confucian Tradition

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2022–23 UCHI Fellow's Talk. Value Conflicts, Moral Diversity & Zhi 志 in Confucian Tradition, Ph.D. Candidate, Philosophy, Yuhan Liang. with a response by Michael Lynch. March 22, 2023, 12:15pm. UCHI Conference Room. This event will also be livestreamed.

Value Conflicts, Moral Diversity & Zhi 志 in Confucian Tradition

Yuhan Liang (Ph.D. Candidate, Philosophy, UConn)

with a response by Michael Lynch (Philosophy, UConn)

Wednesday, October 19, 2022, 3:30pm, RESCHEDULED: Wednesday, March 22, 2022, 12:15pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

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The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend virtually

Moral diversity entails different people can legitimately adopt different practices even in similar cases. However, moral consistency requires people to treat similar cases alike (the doctrine of superveniences). I start with the problem–to what extent diverse practices are legitimate? Diverse practices entail that personal factors, like one’s value preferences, play a role in reasoning, whereas moral consistency requires different people to recognize universal values and separate personal preferences. Thus, the paper argues that taking account of personal factors will not comprise moral consistency. In this talk, I examine three views: 1) Circumstantial realtivism. Scholars (like Alan Donagan) use different circumstances to justify different judgments and thus leave no room for personal considerations. 2) Rational relativism. Rational relativists, Joesph Raz and Ruth Chang, argue that only when rational choices cannot decide the judgment in a specific situation, agents can create will-based reasons by making a commitment. Thus, they level some room for personal considerations. 3) I argue for the third position. Particular personal factors should always play a role in practical reasoning. Through reverse engineering the notion zhi 志, we can learn that zhi calls for dual correspondence. Having zhi is not merely require an intellectual response. It also calls for the cultivation of affective dispositions in everyday practices. Thus, personal considerations should always play a role in practical reasoning. But different zhi will not comprise moral consistency because it will not twist the recognization of right judgments.

Yuhan Liang is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Connecticut. Her research is interdisciplinary and involves Chinese philosophy, virtue epistemology, and moral psychology. At UCHI, she works on the dissertation “Confucian exemplars and Moral Diversity.” This dissertation aims to reconcile moral diversity and consistency via exemplarism approaches. Unlike most Anglo-American philosophies that adopt a top-down approach to studying moral questions in the frame of normative ethics and metaethics, Confucian exemplarism provides a bottom-up pragmatic approach: through reverse engineer exemplars’ everyday practices or instructions, we reconstruct the theoretical commitments based on their moral excellency.

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.

DHMS Presents: Graduate Student Research Colloquium

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DHMS presents a graduate student research colloquim, with Adam McClain (The Gendered Voice Project) and Elizabeth Zavodny (“Archive of Our Own as a Site for DH Research”). October 14, 2022, 12:00pm. UCHI Conference Room, Homer Babbidge Library, with pizza and refreshmentse

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 Digital Humanities and Media Studies Initiative presents:

Graduate Student Research Colloquium

Adam McLain and Elizabeth Zavodny

October 14, 2022, 12:00pm
Homer Babbidge Library, Humanities Institute Conference Room
With pizza and refreshments

“The Gendered Voice Project,” Adam McLain

The “Gendered Voice Project” is a digital humanities project that seeks to graphically and statistically represent the various gendered voices in literature and academia. For the project, voice is defined in two ways: (1) the amount or rate of dialogue spoken within a book, if analyzing fiction; (2) the amount of pages or words written by scholars, if analyzing scholarship. This presentation is an introduction to the methodologies, theories, and prospects of the project, along with various analyses already performed.

Adam McLain is a MA/PhD student in English at the University of Connecticut. He researches and writes on dystopian literature, legal theory, and sexual justice. He has a bachelor’s degree in English and women’s studies from Brigham Young University and a masters of theological studies from Harvard University.

“Archive of Our Own as a Site for DH Research,” Elizabeth Zavodny

I’ll be giving an introduction to and contextualization of fanfiction and fan studies research, with a focus on one of the major fanfiction archives, Archive of Our Own. After giving an overview of how the archive is organized, in particular its unique user-generated tagging system, I’ll present how I have used it for a few past projects on genre and commenting practices. I’ll conclude with a brief discussion of some current ideas and questions that I’m currently refining and interested in receiving feedback and suggestions on.

Elizabeth Zavodny is a 3rd-year PhD student in the English department, with a concentration in Rhetoric and Composition. Her research focuses on the social networks of feedback and circulation in online writing communities, with a particular interest in fanfiction communities. Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, she has a BA from Berry College and an MA from the University of Maine. She currently lives in Willimantic with her partner and their two cats.

Fellow’s Talk: Julia Brush on Cyborgian Potentials

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The Algorithm You May Never Learn: Cyborgian Potentials and Contemporary Asian American Poetry. Ph.D. Candidate, English, Julia Brush, with a response by Evla Orozco Mendoza. October 12, 2022, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room. This even will also be livestreamed.

‘The Algorithm You May Never Learn:’ Cyborgian Potentials and Contemporary Asian American Poetry

Julia Brush (Ph.D. Candidate, English, UConn)

with a response by Elva Orozco Mendoza (Political Science & WGSS, UConn)

Wednesday, October 12, 2022, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

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The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend virtually

This talk draws upon the work of queer cartographies, transnational terrains, and refugee poetics to argue that the the digital space, although borderless physically, represents paradoxical spaces of erasure and possibility for marginalized people. Considering contemporary LGBTQ+ Asian American poetry, this talk questions whether the cyborg figure can offer alternative claims for citizenship and subjectivity while centering the exploration of what it means to be human in a digital age in the United States. This inquiry focuses on the work of queer Korean-American poet Margaret Rhee, feminist new media artist, and scholar of ethnic literature, whose poetry employs the perspective of and in the form of cyborg subjects. Acknowledging that “the digital” serves as a globalized site and capitalist-driven enterprise that is both alienating and disenfranchising, this argument nevertheless counters these dystopian visions via the cyborgian potentials envisioned in Rhee’s collection, Love, Robot (The Operating System: 2017). Given that digital and machinated writing can be mimicked to suggest collaborations between AI technology and artists, cyborgian potentials suggest that subjectivities marked through the vectors of race, gender, and sexuality are capable of overwriting the dominant machines of hegemony. I argue that the cyborg figure offers a critical response to the conception of digital subjects as “neutral” or otherwise essentialized and becomes a liberatory figure within recent Asian American poetry.

Julia Brush is a doctoral candidate in English with a graduate certificate in Literary Translation at the University of Connecticut. Her research focuses on contemporary poetry and poetics, queer theory, and transnational American studies, critical refugee studies, and Asian American Studies. While at UCHI, she will complete her dissertation, “State/Less Aesthetics: Queer Cartographies, Transnational Terrains, and Refugee Poetics.”

Elva Orozco Mendoza is an assistant professor, jointly appointed in the Department of Political Science and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies with affiliations in El Instituto and the Graduate Certificate in Indigeneity, Race, Ethnicity, and Politics. Her research draws on decolonial feminist thought, critical contract theory, comparative political theory, and feminist analyses on maternal activism in Latin America to examine maternal collective action launched in response to extreme violence—forced disappearance, feminicide, targeted killings, and mass incarceration—in the Americas. Her monograph, tentatively titled The Maternal Contract, examines bottom-up agreements between the victims’ mothers to defend their children against state-led and state-enabled violence and criminalization. It argues that mothers’ collectives in the Americas constitute powerful political actors seeking to problematize and counter the normalization of disposable life. By theorizing the maternal contract, this current research contributes to ongoing initiatives to decolonize Western political theory by attending to subaltern actors’ actions and political ideas. Her research addresses major concerns of humanist scholarship, namely how marginalized political actors resist top-down attempts to expel them from the realm of citizenship and humanity.

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.

SEWing Circle: Lauren Leydon-Hardy on Epistemically Collaborative Repair

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The Social Epistemology Working Group Presents a SEWing circle workshop: Epistemically Collaborative Repair, Lauren Leydon-Hardy, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Amherst College. October 6, 2020, 2:00pm. UCHI conference room.

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 Social Epistemology Working Group presents:

A SEWing Circle Workshop

Epistemically Collaborative Repair

Lauren Leydon-Hardy

October 6, 2022, 2:00pm
Homer Babbidge Library, Humanities Institute Conference Room

This event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning. Register to attend virtually.

Many epistemologists have been dubious of the idea of epistemic obligation. For a discipline that often understands itself as beginning with the perennial problem of skepticism, it isn’t hard to see why this would be: if I could be a recently envatted brain, or if I may now be massively deceived by an evil demon, then surely there is nothing that I am obliged to believe—not even that here is a hand. Recently, Jennifer Lackey (2021) has argued not only that we have epistemic duties, but that our epistemic duties pertain to both our doxastic and our practical lives; to what we ought to believe, and to how we ought to conduct ourselves qua epistemic agents. Moreover, she argues that our epistemic duties might be other regarding. Beyond my obligation to believe in accordance with my evidence, I may also have epistemic obligations to you. On this view, positive interpersonal epistemic obligations will include the promotion of various epistemic goods, while negative interpersonal epistemic obligations will involve the prevention of epistemic wrongs or harms. More recently still, Lackey has also developed a framework for thinking about epistemic reparations, which she understands to be: “Intentionally reparative actions in the form of epistemic goods given to those epistemically wronged by parties who acknowledge these wrongs and whose reparative actions are intended to redress them.” On this framework, certain kinds of experiences have distinctively epistemic dimensions. These include “gross violation[s] or injustice[s],” which specifically give rise to “the right to be known, and the corresponding duty to see, hear, and bear witness—to know.” This kind of knowing, which involves bearing witness, is epistemically reparative work. In this paper I explore a particular type of epistemically reparative work. I call this epistemically collaborative repair and suggest that the need for epistemically collaborative repair arises from a particularly thorny type of epistemic obligation to the self. These obligations involve acquiring difficult or challenging articles of self-knowledge, for example, that one has been a victim of child sexual abuse, or that one has been predatorily groomed. Sometimes, we owe it to ourselves to understand what happened to us. And sometimes, we cannot do that alone, through recollection or rumination on the details of our experiences. Instead, I argue that discharging this self-regarding epistemic obligation might only be possible through the satisfaction of another person’s corresponding right to be known. These are cases where an epistemic agent’s route to understanding their first-personal experience is in and through the epistemic work of ‘bearing witness’ in Lackey’s sense. Thus, it is in this act of epistemic service that one may come to learn their own truth, discharging their own, self-regarding epistemic duty through essentially collaborative epistemic repair.

Lauren Leydon-Hardy is an assistant professor at Amherst College, Department of Philosophy. Her research program is centered around the norms that govern our social world and how those norms shape our epistemic lives.

A Celebration of World Poetry Books

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You're invited to a celebration of World Poetry Books, welcoming our new editor, Matvei Yankelevich with readings from distinguished poets and translators Jennifer Grotz Piotr Sommer Maria Borio Danielle Pieratti hosted by the UConn Humanities Institute October 4, 2022, 5:00–7:00pm Wilbur Cross North Reading Room. Hors d'oeuvres and wine will be served.

Book cover for Everything I Don't Know, Jerzy Ficowski Translated from the Polish by Jennifer Grotz and Piotr Sommer
Everything I Don't Know, by Jerzy Ficowski and translated by Jennifer Grotz and Piotr Sommer, winner of the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.

Please join us for a celebration of World Poetry Books

October 4, 2022, 5:00–7:00pm
Wilbur Cross North Reading Room

We will be welcoming World Poetry Books’ new editor, Matvei Yankelevich, and the event will feature readings from distinguished poets and translators, including Jennifer Grotz, Piotr Sommer, Maria Borio, and Danielle Pieratti.

hosted by the UConn Humanities Institute, cosponsored by Creative Writing, Literatures Cultures and Languages, and The Program in Literary Translation.

refreshments will be served

Speakers

Jennifer Grotz

Jennifer Grotz is the author of three books of poetry, Window Left Open (Graywolf Press), The Needle (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), and Cusp (Mariner Books) as well as translator of two books from the French: Psalms of All My Days (Carnegie Mellon), a selection of Patrice de La Tour du Pin, and Rochester Knockings (Open Letter), a novel by Hubert Haddad, and co-translator from the Polish of Jerzy Ficowski's Everything I Don't Know (World Poetry), winner of the 2022 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. She teaches at the University of Rochester and di-rects the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences.

Piotr Sommer

Piotr Sommer is a Polish poet, the author of Things to Translate (Bloodaxe Books), Continued (Wesleyan), and Overdoing It (Trias Chapbook Series). He has won prizes and fellowships, and has taught poetry at American universities. With Jennifer Grotz, he co-translated Jerzy Ficowski's Everything I Don't Know (World Poetry), winner of the 2022 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.He lives outside Warsaw and edits Literatura na Świecie, a magazine of foreign writing in Polish translations.

Maria Borio

Maria Borio is an Italian poet, essayist, and editor. Her books include two collections of poetry, and two scholarly monographs on Italian poetry. She is the poetry editor of the journal Nuovi Argomenti, previously directed by Alberto Moravia and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Her first book in English translation is Transparencies (World Poetry), translated by Danielle Pieratti.

Danielle Pieratti

Danielle Pieratti is the author of Fugitives (Lost Horse Press), winner of the 2017 Connecticut Book Award for poetry, and the translator of Italian poet Maria Borio’s English-language debut, Transparencies (World Poetry). Her most recent poems and translations have appeared in Meridian, Ambit, Mid-American Review, Words Without Borders, and Asymptote.

Dispatches from a UCHI Intern: Esmé Allopenna

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This summer, Esmé Allopenna, a local high school senior, served as the Humanities Institute’s first intern. She assisted with research for ongoing UCHI projects and explored some of her own interests in humanities research. She reflects on her summer at UCHI below.

As an intern at UConn’s Humanities Institute (UCHI) I had the opportunity to see what work and research in the humanities looks like first-hand. With the immeasurable guidance of two UCHI constituents, Katrina Van Dyke and Elizabeth Della Zazzera, I was able to explore my niches in the humanities.

First, I assisted with the Institute’s Seeing Truth exhibition. Reading through the site Atlas for the End of the World, which maps the ‘best’ future of the Earth’s endangered bioregions, I was able to contend how the rapidly-updated, satellite-generated maps fail to consider the specific circumstances of an endangered bioregion. While working to save endangered bioregions may seem like the necessary action, and most all agree that it is, the map disregards whose land is endangered. Often, if a bioregion is endangered on Indigenous land, it is not the fault of the Indigenous peoples living on the land, but rather white people who exploited and/or colonized the land. This being the case, Atlas for the End fails to ask the obvious question: Is it really going to help the endangered bioregions to send help from the same governments that destroyed them?

The Seeing Truth exhibition displays a map of the predicted future of the United States’ imperialism by Dan Mills. Along with Atlas for the End of the World, Mills’ map shows that no matter how scientific a map may be, cartography is an art, subject to the map-maker’s own biases and predilections.

Next, with the help of Elizabeth and Katrina, I was able to explore my interest in the philosophy of language. We started with the paper, “Genocidal Language Games” by Lynne Tirrell. In the paper, Tirrell asserts that language, alone, can be a genocidal act. After reading and discussing the paper, I became fascinated with the power language plays, specifically derogatory terms, and continued to research philosophical explanations as to how and why language is so powerful. I went on to read “Slurring Perspectives” by Elizabeth Camp, “Expressivism and the Offensiveness of Slurs,” by Robin Jeshion, and “Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts,” by Rae Langton. The research I had accumulated across these papers, with some external sources, culminated in a paper where I argue that the re-emerged popularization of the word bimbo is an unsuccessful attempt at reclamation.

As I am applying to colleges, this experience made it definite in my mind that I will study in the humanities. Interning in a collaborative environment like UCHI has allowed me to discover just how much the humanities link with current issues in our world.