A Celebration of World Poetry Books

Posted on September 21, 2022September 29, 2022 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

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

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.

Dispatches from a UCHI Intern: Esmé Allopenna

Posted on September 16, 2022September 16, 2022 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

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.

Fellow’s Talk: Britney Murphy on VISTA and the Boundaries of Citizenship

Posted on September 6, 2022September 6, 2022 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

Outsiders Within: Volunteers in Service to America and the Boundaries of Citizenship 1962–1971

Britney Murphy (Ph.D. Candidate, History, UConn)

with a response by Hind Ahmed Zaki (Political Science, UConn)

Wednesday, September 28, 2022, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

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The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

This talk asks the question, why, despite enjoying broad public and bipartisan support, national community service programs have not become institutionalized in the United States. Britney’s dissertation evaluates the relationship among civic engagement, citizenship, and socioeconomic identities through the lens of one national community service program, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA). Volunteers’ activism—in the rural areas of Appalachia, urban slums, migrant labor camps, and among Native American communities—tested the nation’s commitment to addressing socioeconomic inequality and political exclusion. The early history of VISTA (1962–1971) suggests that race, class, and gender hierarchies contributed to conflicting ideas about the causes of national problems and the role of government volunteers in finding solutions.

Britney Murphy is a doctoral candidate in the History Department. Her research interests include modern U.S. history, urban history, environmental justice, food access, and volunteerism. While at UCHI, Britney will complete her dissertation, “Outsiders Within: Volunteers in Service to America and the Boundaries of Citizenship, 1962–1971.”

Hind Ahmed Zaki is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Literatures, Cultures, and Languages. Her scholarly interests span feminist political theory and practice, transnational feminist movements and politics, gender-based violence, and comparative politics of the state, with a special focus on the Middle East and North Africa. Dr. Ahmed Zaki’s research is published in several languages. Her doctoral dissertation, completed at the University of Washington in 2018, was the winner of the 2019 American Political Science Association’s Women and Politics section award for best dissertation on gender and politics and the democracy and autocracy section’s best field work award in the same year. She is an elected member at large of the board of the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS) since 2018.

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: The Digital Transformation of the German Literature Archive

Posted on September 1, 2022September 1, 2022 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

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:

The Digital Transformation of the German Literature Archive

Prof. Dr. Roland S. Kamzelak

September 7, 2022, 2:30pm
Homer Babbidge Library, Humanities Institute Conference Room
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This event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning. Register to attend virtually.

The talk will introduce the German Literature Archive in Marbach am Neckar with its important holdings, its challenges and plans for transformation into a digital archive. A focus will be on its growing portal for scholarly editions and the development of a Science Data Center for Literature (SDC4Lit). The role and use of DH methodology and tools will play an important role in the transformation.

Prof. Dr. Roland S. Kamzelak was born 1961 in Subiaco (Perth), Australia. Visited schools in Tettnang, Rockville, Maryland (Highschool Diploma 1980), Friedrichshafen (Abitur 1982) and studied Political Sciences, English and German Studies at the University of Tübingen and the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia; 1994 Staatsexamen (M. A.); 2004 Ph. D. at the University of Tübingen with “E-Editionen. Zur neuen Praxis der Editionsphilologie. Ida und Richard Dehmel – Harry Graf Kessler. Briefwechsel 1898-1935.” – 1994 – 1999 Academic Assistant at the German Literature Archive Marbach for the edition project Harry Graf Kessler; 1999 – 2000 Cultural Consultant for the Wüstenrot Foundation, Ludwigsburg; since 2000 Head of Development and Deputy Director of the German Literature Archive Marbach with focus on academic editing and digital humanities. – 1996-2013 Visiting lecturer for German Literature at the University of Education Ludwigsburg, since 2010 Visiting Lecturer for Digital Humanities at the University of Würzburg, since 2018 professor; other visiting lectorates at the Institute for Cultural Management, PH Ludwigsburg, at the Universities of Stuttgart (German Literature), Darmstadt (Digital Humanities) und Schwäbisch Gmünd (Angloamerican Literatures).

This event is cosponsored by Greenhouse Studios.

Welcome Back Message from UCHI

Posted on September 1, 2022 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

Dear colleagues,

In an age of denialism—of COVID, climate change, and elections—does truth still matter? Here at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, we think it does, even though it is often hard to find, difficult to agree on, and endlessly complex. In that vein, we recommend recent UCHI fellow Amanda Crawford’s achingly moving exploration of denialism in the context of Sandy Hook and gun violence.

Truth and knowledge in all their many forms are a theme this year. Having just wrapped up our 20^th-anniversary year we welcome you back for the start of another season of creative research events here at the Institute, including projects that reach out to the public beyond UConn’s campus. In particular:

- Picturing the Pandemic opening at Hartford Public Library on October 27.
- Also in October (10/4) we host a celebration of our own World Poetry Books with Peter Constantine and Pen-Faulkner Award winning authors and translators.
- Funded by a generous grant from the Luce foundation, and in collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History, Alexis Boylan’s incredibly innovative Seeing Truth exhibition opens on January 19 at the Benton.

In addition, we welcome a stellar new class of fellows to the Institute, working on projects ranging from the social context of scientific inquiry to indigenous elders to queer cartographies. And this year we are especially excited to welcome our inaugural undergraduate fellows, a program we are looking forward to expanding in the years to come.

Of course, our regular programming returns, with a full range of talks in Digital Humanities and Media Studies (led by Yohei Igarashi) and the return of Publishing NOW.

As always, we continue to accept applications for funding for research, collaboration, and invited speakers all across campus, and we remind you that applications for our residential fellowships are due in February.

Keep up with everything we’re doing by following us on social media and subscribing to our newsletter: s.uconn.edu/subscribe. You won’t regret it—and that’s the truth.

Wishing everyone an excellent start to this academic year,

The UCHI Team

Fellow’s Talk: Shihan Zheng on Opium Addiction in 19th-Century China

Posted on August 30, 2022August 30, 2022 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

Opium Addiction in Nineteenth-Century China

Shihan Zheng (Ph.D. Candidate, History, UConn)

with a response by Stefan Kaufmann (Linguistics, UConn)

Wednesday, September 21, 2022, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

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The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Compared to Euro-American experience with opium, the story of opium smoking in nineteenth-century China appears strikingly peculiar. Western observers at the time believed that opium smoking was a symbol of incompetence, backwardness, and immorality—all the ills of traditional Chinese civilization. Thus, the discussion of opium was always incorporated in a broader criticism of Chinese customs that were viewed as archaic, uncivilized, and barbaric. Historians have highlighted the political and economic influence of opium in late-imperial China, but a thorough study of the dynamic and complicated history of the ideas related to opium addiction has not yet been done. This study seeks to trace the origins and development of discourse on opium addiction in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China. Shihan Zheng hopes to suggest that the creation of languages and ideas of opium addiction was part of the knowledge productions at the turn of the twentieth century, and the efforts to find the “cure” for the drug addiction had direct relevance to China’s experience with “modernity.”

Shihan Zheng is a History doctoral candidate at the University of Connecticut. His research interests include conceptual history, medical history, drug and addiction studies, and history of science. At UCHI, he will work on his dissertation project, “The Opium Discourse in China, 1830–1910.” This study will bring out nuances of the story of opium in China that have been neglected in historical literature, highlight the role of opium discourse in the construction of Chinese modernity, and help us better understand contemporary China.

Stefan Kaufmann is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Connecticut. His research revolves around the meaning and use of language: how information is encoded in linguistic expressions, the range of variability of this encoding across languages, and what linguistic patterns can reveal about the way speakers view and think about themselves and their physical and social surroundings. Kaufmann’s current project focuses on the the language of time and possibility, in relation to notions like uncertainty, causality, and hypothetical reasoning. Kaufmann has published numerous articles and book chapters on these topics. He will be working on a book manuscript at UCHI.

Access note

The Political Theory Workshop Announces 2022–23 Speakers

Posted on August 8, 2022August 8, 2022 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

In 2022–23, the Political Theory Workshop will be hosting the following speakers. More information will be posted about each talk as it is available.

September 19th, 12:15-1:30p.m., Oak 438/Zoom
“The Coloniality of Happiness”
Dana Miranda, Philosophy, UMass Boston
Commentator: August Shipman, Political Science

October 17th, 12:15-1:30p.m., Oak 438/Zoom
“Seeing Like an Activist”
Erin Pineda, Government, Smith College
Commentator: Bianka Adamatti, Political Science

November 14th, 12:15-1:30p.m., Oak 438/Zoom
“Liberatory Intellectual Virtues and Education”
Heather Muraviov, Philosophy, UConn
Commentator: Brooks Kirchgassner, Political Science

January 30th, 12:15-1:30p.m., Oak 438/Zoom
“Theorizing Racial Caste with W.E.B. Du Bois”
Hari Ramesh, Government, Wesleyan University
Commentator: Altan Atamer, Political Science

February 20th, 12:15-1:30p.m., Oak 438/Zoom
“Political disorientation, legibility, and trumpism”
Roberto Alejandro, Political Science, UMass Amherst
Commentator: Justin Theodra, Political Science

March 27th, 12:15-1:30p.m. p.m., Oak 438/Zoom
“Caribbean Anticolonial Thought”
Aaron Kamugisha, Africana Studies, Smith College
Commentator: San Lee, Political Science

April 25th, 12:00-1:30p.m. Zoom (only)
“The Enlightenment-Era ‘Kindness Wars’ and the Political Theory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau”
Noel Cazenave, Sociology and Philosophy, UConn
Commentator: Michael Morrell, Political Science

Congratulations to UCHI’s 2021–2022 Graduate Research Scholars

Posted on May 23, 2022May 24, 2022 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

UCHI wishes to extend congratulations to this year’s graduate research scholars—Erik Freeman, Carol Gray, Drew Johnson, and Anna Ziering. All four of the 2021–2022 graduate fellows are headed off to postdoctoral fellowships or tenure-track jobs this fall.

Erik Freeman (History) will be assistant professor of American History at Snow College in Ephraim, UT. He will be defending his dissertation, “The Mormon International: Transnational Communitarian Politics and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 1830-1890,” this summmer. His committee members are Christopher Clark (advisor), Manisha Sinha, and Sylvia Schafer (Nina Dayton and Segio Luzzato are readers).

Carol Gray (Political Science) was awarded the Mary Miles Bibb Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellowship at Framingham State University (FSU) in Framingham, Massachusetts. The two-year fellowship, at the rank of Assistant Professor, begins in Fall 2022, and focuses on courses in American Politics and Pre-Law. The Fellowship is named for Mary Miles Bibb who was the first Black woman graduate of FSU in 1843 who went on to teach in Boston and Philadelphia. Gray will be defending her dissertation, “Law as a Site of Struggle for Human Rights,” a case study about Egypt and human rights NGOs, in June. Her committee members are Jeremy Pressman (advisor), Cyrus Zirakzadeh, Thomas Hayes (Jennifer Sterling-Folker and Bruce Rutherford are readers.)

Drew Johnson (Philosophy) will be starting a two-year research postdoc in August, associated with the ERC-funded GoodAttention project at the University of Oslo. He will be working on Subproject 1 of the Descriptive Strand of the project, on identifying natural norms for attention. Drew recently defended his dissertation, “A Hybrid Theory of Ethical Thought and Discourse.” His committee members are Dorit Bar-On (advisor), Michael Lynch, Paul Bloomfield, and William Lycan.

Anna Ziering (English) has accepted a position as assistant professor of Women’s and Gender Studies (affiliated with African American Studies) at Oglethorpe University. She recently defended her dissertation, “Dirty Forms: Masochism, Race, and World-Making in U.S. Literature and Culture,” and her committee members are Chris Vials (advisor), Greg Pierrot, and fellow 2021–22 UCHI fellow Micki McElya.

Please join us in congratulating Erik, Carol, Drew, and Anna!!

Year in Review: 2021–2022

Posted on May 9, 2022May 9, 2022 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

It has been a celebratory year here at UCHI. The year began with our return to in-person work after our completely virtual 2020–2021 academic year. For the first time since March 2020 fellows could use their offices, share thoughts around the coffee machine, and attend each other’s talks in our conference room. Visitors to the Institute could once again browse the fruits of fellowships past on our bookshelves, peruse past winners of the Sharon Harris Book Award, and attend post-event receptions in our collaborative space. And while that would be more than enough cause for celebration, this year we also commemorated the Institute’s 20th anniversary. Since its founding in 2001 UCHI has served as a hub for all things humanities at UConn. Over the years, we’ve embarked on projects like the Digital Humanities and Media Studies Initiative, invited brilliant speakers like Toni Morrison to campus, and offered time and space for work to over 250 fellows. We are incredibly proud of how the Institute has flourished over these twenty years. Here’s a look back at some of what we did as we celebrated twenty years of UCHI. (Click any image to see it full-size.)

The year began with our welcome reception, held outside Homer Babbidge Library. We were fortunate to have good weather as we gathered under the portico, seeing colleagues in person for the first time in a year and half. Director Michael Lynch addressed the gathered crowd, thanking UCHI’s founding director, Richard Brown, as well as administrators, fellows, and staff past and present for their support of the Institute, noting that, “We’ve come a long way in twenty years thanks to the work of so many—from a small suite of rooms in Austin to our expansive home here in the library, the intellectual center of campus.”

In November, we welcomed a group of talented undergraduate humanities researchers to our conference room for the first student-run humanities research symposium at UConn. Students presented on topics from human rights to Shakespeare to Afrofuturism, attended a workshop about humanities-related careers, and listened to a keynote address by UCHI’s own Alexis Boylan. The student organizers, Madelon Morin-Viall, Aarushi Nohria, and Rylee Thomas deserve all the credit for spearheading what we hope will become an annual tradition.

Welcome 2022–2023 Humanities Institute Fellows!

Posted on April 21, 2022April 20, 2023 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

The University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) is proud to announce its incoming class of humanities fellows. This year, we are especially excited to welcome our two inaugural Undergraduate Research Fellows, who will join two visiting fellows (including our Henry Luce Foundation Future of Truth fellow), four dissertation scholars (including the Draper Dissertation Fellow and the first Richard Brown Dissertation Fellow), and seven UConn faculty fellows (including the Mellon UCHI Faculty of Color Working Group Fellow). We have fellows representing a broad swath of disciplines, including History; English; Philosophy; Political Science; Linguistics; Digital Media and Design; Literatures, Culture and Languages; and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies. Their projects take many forms including scholarly monographs, biographies, documentary films, and novels, and cover topics from the history of early modern empires to the language of time and possibility. For more information on our fellowship program see our Become a Fellow page. Welcome fellows!