UCHI Stands in Solidarity with the UVM Humanities Center

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,

Luis Vivanco, Director
Ilyse Morgenstein-Fuerst, Associate Director

Download a PDF of the statement.

Spring 2021 Events

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UCHI has an exciting roster of events coming up this Spring, detailed below. Be sure to peruse our offerings and register for the events you’d like to attend. Stay tuned as we announce more upcoming events!

Fellow’s Talk: Elizabeth Athens

January 27, 2021

4:00pm

REGISTER

Fellow’s Talk: Amanda Crawford

February 3, 2021

4:00pm

REGISTER

Publishing Now! Humanities Journals

February 10, 2021

1:15pm

REGISTER

Fellow’s Talk: Sean Forbes

February 10, 2021

4:00pm

REGISTER

DHMS: Allen Riddell

February 15, 2021

4:00pm

REGISTER

Fellow’s Talk: Erica Holberg

February 17, 2021

4:00pm

REGISTER

DHMS: Shaoling Ma

February 22, 2021

6:00pm

REGISTER

Fellow’s Talk: Amy Meyers

February 24, 2021

4:00pm

REGISTER

Fellow’s Talk: Melanie Newport

March 3, 2021

4:00pm

REGISTER

Fellow’s Talk: Helen Rozwadowski

March 10, 2021

4:00pm

REGISTER

Fellow’s Talk: Sarah Winter

March 17, 2021

4:00pm

REGISTER

Fellow’s Talk: David Samuels

March 24, 2021

4:00pm

REGISTER

UConn Reads: Truth, Democracy, and Climate Change

March 25, 2021

4:00pm

REGISTER

Fellow’s Talk: Sara Silverstein

March 31, 2021

4:00pm

REGISTER

UConn Reads: Native Scholars and Artists on Climate Justice

April 1, 2021

2:00pm

REGISTER

Graduate Fellowships in the Humanities and Social Sciences

April 7, 2021

1:00pm

REGISTER

Fellow’s Talk: Scott Wallace

April 7, 2021

4:00pm

REGISTER

UConn Reads: Irish Travellers

April 8, 2021

4:00pm

REGISTER

DHMS: Simon Burrows

April 21, 2021

6:30pm

REGISTER

The Political Theory Workshop Presents: S. Emre Gercek

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The Political Theory Workshop presents:

‘Moral and Material Amelioration of the Lots of All’: Louis Blanc’s Theory of Democratic Associations

S. Emre Gercek, Political Science, UConn
in conversation with Mandy Long, Ph.D. Candidate, Philosophy
December 8, 11:00 am–1:00 pm, on Zoom

This paper argues that democracy became an important idea in nineteenth-century Europe because it offered a vocabulary to address the problems of social disintegration and inequality. It turns to Louis Blanc’s work Organization of Labor to demonstrate how democracy expressed the demands for egalitarian solidarity. Particularly important was Blanc’s proposal of “social workshops:” a reorganization of industry in the form of democratic worker associations. Yet, this idea created a novel tension. While Blanc championed democracy to demand the inclusion and enfranchisement of the working class, this demand conflicted with the universalist aspirations of republican citizenship. Blanc reconciled this tension between the images of the working class and the citizen in his socialist and republican ideas when he suggested that democratic associations would allow workers to have egalitarian control over their conditions while simultaneously fostering their habits and opportunities to be participatory citizens.

Co-sponsored by the UConn Humanities Institute

Questions? Email jane.gordon@uconn.edu

Download poster.

Publishing NOW: Gita Manaktala of MIT Press

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Poster for Publishing NOW with Gita Manaktala of MIT Press in conversation with Alexis L. Boylan. December 2, 2020, 11:00am. Live. Online. Registration Required. With headshot of Manaktala.

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

The University of Connecticut Humanities Institute presents:

Publishing NOW!

With Gita Manaktala of MIT Press in conversation with Alexis L. Boylan.

December 2, 2020, 11:00am–12:00pm

An online webinar. Event registration is required for attendance.

Gita Manaktala is the Editorial Director of the MIT Press, a publisher of scholarship at the intersection of the arts, sciences, and technology. Known for intellectual daring and distinctive design, MIT Press books push the boundaries of knowledge in fields from contemporary art and architecture to the life sciences, computing, economics, philosophy, cognitive science, environmental studies, linguistics, media studies, and STS. Gita’s own acquisitions are in the areas of information science and communication. Until 2009, she served as the press’s marketing director with responsibility for worldwide promotion and sales. In this role, she helped to develop CISnet, an online collection of the Press’s computer and information science titles, now on the IEEE Explore platform. She has served on the board of directors of the Association of American University Presses and co-chaired its first diversity and inclusion task force, which led to a standing committee dedicated to Equity, Justice, and Inclusion, which she also co-chaired. She is a regular speaker on topics in scholarly communication and publishing.

Alexis L. Boylan is the acting director of the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) and an associate professor with a joint appointment in the Art and Art History Department and the Africana Studies Institute. She is the author of Visual Culture (MIT Press, 2020), Ashcan Art, Whiteness, and the Unspectacular Man (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), co-author of Furious Feminisms: Alternate Routes on Mad Max: Fury Road (University of Minnesota, 2020), editor ofThomas Kinkade, The Artist in the Mall (Duke University Press, 2017), and editor of the forthcoming Ellen Emmet Rand: Gender, Art, and Business (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020). She has published in American Art, Archives of American Art Journal, Boston Review, Journal of Curatorial Studies, and Public Books. Her next book focuses on the art created for the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City and how art and science antagonize and inspire cultural dialogues about truth and knowledge.

Fellow’s Talk: Shaine Scarminach on the Law of the Sea Convention

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Post for Shaine Scarminach's talk. Refusal and Resignation: The Reagan Administration and the Law of the Sea Convention. Dissertation Research Scholar Shaine Scarminach with a response by Sara Silverstein. Live Online Registration Required. December 2, 2020, 4:00pm

Refusal and Resignation: The Reagan Administration and the Law of the Sea Convention

Shaine Scarminach (Ph.D. Candidate, History)

with a response by Sara Silverstein (Assistant Professor of History and Human Rights, UConn)

Wednesday, December 2, 2020, 4:00pm (Online—Register here)

 

“Refusal and Resignation: The Reagan Administration and the Law of the Sea Convention” explores President Ronald Reagan’s decision not to sign the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Despite nine years of painstaking negotiations, the Reagan administration rejected the final agreement on the grounds that it ran counter to U.S. interests. I argue that this abrupt shift resulted less from disagreements over specific provisions and more from the principles behind the treaty. In rejecting an agreement that championed multilateral negotiations, supranational institutions, and economic redistribution, the Reagan administration emphasized the need for national sovereignty, the free market, and bilateral relations to govern the world’s oceans. The talk will discuss the Reagan administration’s failed attempt to negotiate last minute changes to the treaty, and the policy decisions that led the United States to remain outside of an agreement that governs more than two-thirds of the Earth’s surface.

Shaine Scarminach is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of Connecticut. He studies the history of the United States in the world, with an emphasis on U.S. empire, world capitalism, and the global environment. His dissertation, “Lost at Sea: The United States and the Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans,” explores the U.S. role in developing the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. His research has been supported by the Tinker Foundation, the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, and the Rockefeller Archive Center.

Sara Silverstein is a jointly appointed Assistant Professor of History and Human Rights. Her work focuses on the history of internationalism, modern Europe, social rights, global health, development, refugees and migrants, and statelessness. She received her Ph.D. in History from Yale University in 2016, her M.Phil. in Modern European History from the University of Oxford in 2009, and her A.B. in Literature from Dartmouth College in 2007. Before coming to UConn, she was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and has been a Fox Fellow at Sciences Po, Paris, a junior visiting fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, and a Franke Fellow at Yale. She is the 2017 winner of the World History Association Dissertation Prize.

Registration is required for the event.

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

Political Theory Workshop Presents: Gregory E. Doukas

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The Political Theory Workshop presents:

Political Responsibility in the Thought of Karl Jaspers and Hannah Arendt: Fundaments for a Shared World

Gregory Doukas, PhD Candidate, Political Science
in conversation with Darian Spearman, PhD Candidate, Philosophy
November 17th, 11:00 am–1:00 pm, on Zoom

In the 20th century, the rise of fascism inside geographical European polities prompted two thinkers indigenous to the Global North to question the fundaments upon which any form of collective autonomy and flourishing could be based. It was by returning to foundational questions of political theory, including the social nature power, that Karl Jaspers and Hannah Arendt arrived at the problem of political responsibility. Their reflections on this theme coursed through such political phenomenological issues as the intersubjective, or public, constitution of truth which, in turn, facilitated more radical forms of anthropological questioning related to the role of politics in human existence. The argument, in the end, was not only that political responsibility is distinct in critical ways from moral, legal, and metaphysical forms of responsibility, but also that political responsibility constitutes the very meaning of the set of normative and institutional arrangements called freedom.

Co-sponsored by the UConn Humanities Institute

Questions? Email jane.gordon@uconn.edu

Download poster.

Fellow’s Talk: Ashley Gangi on the Nineteenth-Century American Con Woman

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Poster for Ashley Gangi talk. Over a nineteenth-century image of women gathered around a table the text reads: Behind a Mask, Sentimental Performance and the Nineteenth-Century American Con Woman. Dissertation Research Scholar Ashley Gangi with a response by Amanda Crawford. Live. Online. Registration required. November 18, 2020, 4:00pm.

“Behind a Mask”: Sentimental Performance and the Nineteenth-Century American Con Woman

Ashley Gangi (Ph.D. Candidate, English)

with a response by Amanda J. Crawford (Assistant Professor of Journalism, UConn)

Wednesday, November 18, 2020, 4:00pm (Online—Register here)

 

“‘Behind a Mask’”: Sentimental Performance and the Nineteenth-Century Con Woman” explores the economic value of sincere sentimentality for middle- and upper-class American women in the nineteenth century. It traces a pattern in popular sentimental stories, arguing that such stories had a tendency to portray women as unwitting actors in dramatic scenarios to emphasize the sincerity of their feelings. These stories attempted to resolve the tension between performance and sincerity by suggesting that only so-called “true” sentimental feelings earned cultural capital. The talk will compare stories from Godey’s Lady’s Book to Louisa May Alcott’s sensational tale, “Behind a Mask,” which describes the machinations of a confidence woman who poses as a governess and plays the sentimental heroine in order to acquire economic security through marriage. Alcott troubles the distinction between authenticity and social deception, thereby opening up a space for women to exert more control over their social and economic lives.

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

Amanda J. Crawford is an assistant professor of journalism at UConn, a UCHI Faculty Fellow, and former reporter for Bloomberg News, The Arizona Republic, and The Baltimore Sun. An investigative journalist, political reporter, and narrative nonfiction writer, Crawford’s work explores the human impact of public policy. She has written extensively about gun policy, mass shootings, prisons, criminal justice, immigration, health care, and sexual assault, and she has covered elections and government at every level across the U.S. Her writing has been widely published by major media outlets and literary journals including Businessweek, People, National Geographic, Ms. Magazine, High Times, Phoenix Magazine, The Huffington Post, The Hartford Courant, and Creative Nonfiction.

Registration is required for the event.

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

Watch now:

DHMS Presents Book Traces

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The Digital Humanities and Media Studies Initiative presents Book Traces, Kristin Jensen (UVA), Michael Rodriguez (UConn Library). Live. Online. Registration required. November 18, 2020, 1:00pm. Co-sponsored by UConn Library.

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

The Digital Humanities and Media Studies Initiative presents:

Book Traces

Kristin Jensen (UVA) and Michael Rodriguez (UConn Library)

November 18, 2020, 1:00–2:00pm

An online webinar. Registration is required for attendance.

Books are not just containers of information: they are also physical artifacts, and they bear traces of the hands they have passed through over time. Many of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century books in college collections had a life outside the library before they were donated: they may have been exchanged between friends and lovers, carried along to war, filled with idle doodling, or used as a place to record tender memories of lost loved ones. The Book Traces project is an effort to discover these uniquely modified volumes in library collections and advocate for their importance as artifacts of the history of readers’ relationships with their books, and with each other. Kristin Jensen, project manager for Book Traces based at the University of Virginia, will speak about “finding cool stuff in old books” at a time when American college libraries are turning towards mass digitization, shared print consortia, and efforts to manage down the size of print collections. Michael Rodriguez will speak to the UConn Library’s participation in Book Traces, share intriguing examples of marginalia discovered in our collections, and situate Book Traces in a larger context of library collections and strategies.

Co-sponsored by UConn Library.

Based at the University of Virginia Library, Kristin Jensen is the project manager for Book Traces and is currently, along with Prof. Andrew Stauffer, co-directing a planning grant from the Mellon Foundation. Before joining the UVA Library staff, Kristin worked as a project manager at Performant Software Solutions in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she specialized in steering digital humanities projects through the software development process. She has also worked at the University of Virginia’s Morris Law Library, NINES, and the former Electronic Text Center. Kristin holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia with a concentration in eighteenth-century British literature.

Michael Rodriguez is Collections Strategist at the UConn Library, where he coordinates collection development and strategic initiatives, including the Library’s participation in Book Traces. Michael publishes and presents widely in library venues and serves as past president of the Association of College and Research Libraries, New England Chapter. He holds an M.S. in library and information studies from Florida State University.

Watch now:

You Should…Pre-Election Edition. Part V

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In advance of the upcoming election, we’ve asked members of the UCHI community to suggest a book, article, poem, painting, video, or piece of music that they think everyone should take a look at in this current moment.

Melanie Newport says you should read…

Dan Royles, To Make the Wounded Whole: The African American Struggle Against HIV / AIDS (UNC Press, 2020). This humane and timely book recounts how people fought against racism and for safety, healing, and political power during a global epidemic.

Book cover of Dan Royles' To Make the Wounded Whole

Shaine Scarminach says you should watch…

Peter Watkins’s film La Commune (2000), to see how ordinary people can seize the reins of history and build a better world.

Promotional image for the film La Commune. A woman, her back to the viewer, reads a broadside.
Promotional image from the film

Sarah Willen says you should consider journaling…

with the Pandemic Journaling Project. This combined journaling platform and research study, hosted right here at UConn, has become an online space for chronicling the turbulent world swirling around us—and for glimpsing others’ experiences of these wild times. In about 15 minutes a week, you can create your own downloadable journal in writing, audio, or images. To see public posts contributed by folx around the United States and the world (over 550 journalers in 24 countries so far), check out PJP’s Featured Entries page.

How will you tell your COVID-19 story to your children & grandchildren? The Pandemic Journaling Project.

Contributors

Melanie Newport is assistant professor of history at the University of Connecticut and a 2020–21 UCHI Faculty Fellow. She is affiliated faculty in the American Studies, Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, and Urban and Community Studies programs. She teaches urban history and criminal justice history at UConn’s Hartford campus. She holds a BA from Pacific Lutheran University, an MA from the University of Utah, and PhD from Temple University. She is a contributor to Oral History, Community, and Work in the American West and a forthcoming volume, New Histories of Black Chicago. Newport’s work has been supported by the Center for the Humanities at Temple, the Black Metropolis Research Consortium, and the University of Illinois at Chicago and University of Chicago libraries.

​Shaine Scarminach is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History and a 2020–21 UCHI Dissertation Research Scholar. He received a BA in history from the University of San Francisco and an MA in history from California State University, Los Angeles. He studies the history of the U.S. in the World, with an emphasis on the historical relationship between U.S. empire, world capitalism, and the global environment. His research has been supported by the Tinker Foundation, the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, and the Rockefeller Archive Center.

Sarah S. Willen, PhD, MPH is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut and Director of the Research Program on Global Health and Human Rights at the university’s Human Rights Institute. A former NIMH Postdoctoral Fellow in Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, she holds a PhD in Anthropology and an MPH in Global Health, both from Emory University. She is one of the co-founders of the Pandemic Journaling Project.