“Who Deserves a Healthy Life?”

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“Who Deserves a Healthy Life?” A community conversation and emerging research study led by former UCHI fellow

Last spring, a leading U.S. health foundation approached UConn medical anthropologist Sarah Willen, an Assistant Professor of Anthropology, former UCHI Fellow, and Director of the Research Program on Global Health and Human Rights at the Human Rights Institute (HRI), to learn more about her work on “health-related deservingness” – the crucial but often unspoken question of “who deserves what, and why” in the health domain.

Since then, Willen has assembled a multidisciplinary team of researchers at Cleveland State University, Trinity College, the University of South Florida, Brown University, and Case Western Reserve University to explore this question in the contemporary United States. The two-phase, collaborative study they have developed hinges on two linked concepts: individuals’ (1) sense of deservingness, defined as the experience of feeling valued in and by society, and (2) deservingness assessments, defined as their evaluations of what different social groups, including their own, do or do not deserve in the health domain. The team plans to investigate how Americans from diverse backgrounds conceptualize health-related deservingness; how those conceptions can change; and how such changes might affect individuals’ willingness to take concrete action to promote health equity.

In the first study phase, the team plans to “capitaliz[e] on an available opportunity to generate new knowledge that can inform policy intervention” (Williams & Purdie Vaughns 2016: 640) by studying a multi-sectoral, county-wide health equity initiative called Health Improvement Partnership-Cuyahoga (henceforth HIP-Cuyahoga) that is currently underway in the county that encompasses Cleveland, Ohio.

In January 2017, with support from CSU along with UConn’s Humanities Institute, Human Rights Institute, and the Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Prevention (InCHIP), Willen and her colleagues convened in Cleveland for a two-day planning workshop. Yet one string was attached: the group needed to hold a public event of some sort.

Since they were meeting for the first time, it seemed premature to hold a public event casting the researchers as experts. Instead, they took the somewhat unusual step of partnering with HIP-Cuyahoga and the county-wide Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) to sponsor and co-facilitate a community conversation about racism and health inequity at the community center of a local public housing community on the evening before their workshop.

Designed as a screening and discussion of clips from the documentary “Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?,” the event attracted an audience of over 60 participants, including about 45 community residents, 10 local public health leaders, and the research team. For community members, the evening provided an opportunity to activate the community’s Social Justice Subcommittee, a healthy meal from a local African American-owned café, and a lively conversation about racism, inequality, and the moral obligations involved in community based research. For the research team, the event also offered an illuminating window onto Cleveland and HIP-Cuyahoga – and a powerful prelude to their collaborative work over the next two days. Their research proposal has now been submitted and, if funded, the study will launch in mid-2017.

Sponsored by Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority, HIP-Cuyahoga, Cleveland State University, and UConn’s Humanities Institute, Human Rights Institute, and Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Prevention (InCHIP).

“Must the Revolution be Digital?” March 9, 2017

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“Must the Revolution be Digital?” is a panel discussion featuring Zakia Salime and David Karpf. With the events of the Arab Spring and recent mobilization around the Movement for Black Lives, it is generally accepted that digital and social media have become crucial for activism and resistance. However, the debates around digital and online activism are fraught and complicated. One side argues that these new forms are inherently lazy, youth oriented, and remain embedded in neoliberal structures that foreclose revolution from reaching its full radical potential. Yet another argument claims these activisms are not disconnected from bodies on the ground and do the necessary work of generating immediacy and building community around shared causes. Zakia Salime is Associate Professor at the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers and currently Visiting Associate Professor at Yale’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department. Her co-edited volume, with Frances Hasso, Freedom without Permission: Bodies and Space in the Arab Revolutions (2016, Duke University Press) investigates the embodied, sexualized and gendered spaces that were generated, transformed and reconfigured during the Arab uprisings.

David Karpf is Assistant Professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. He is the author of The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy (2012, Oxford University Press) and Analytic Activism: Digital Listening and the New Political Strategy (2017, Oxford University Press).

Sponsored by the UConn Humanities Institute’s Digital Humanities Reading Group and moderated by Bhakti Shringarpure.

4/20 Talk: The Atomic Origins of America’s National Security State: How Nuclear Weapons Produced an Imperial Presidency and Degraded Democracy

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Professor Christian Appy

Department of History, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Thursday April 20, 4:00-5:30. Laurel Hall room 205.

 

From the Manhattan Project to the Global War on Terror, nuclear weapons have had a pernicious impact on American political culture. The secrecy and concentrated power under which the first atomic weapons were created provided a model for the post–World War II permanent national security state, presided over by presidents invested with unprecedented power. Their exclusive authority to produce and use atomic weapons—codified by the Atomic Energy Act of 1946—led to further expansions of presidential powers not conferred by the constitution. The authority to launch globe-threatening weapons has led to a wide range of additional assertions of power unaccountable to the public or its elected representatives, including covert overthrows of foreign governments, secret bombings of foreign nations, unilateral abdication of treaties, warrantless surveillance of American citizens, and routine circumvention of Congress’s constitutional power to declare war. This lecture will argue that nuclear weapons are inherently undemocratic and must be abolished before we can begin dismantling the national security state and restoring genuinely representative government.

Professor Appy is a noted political and social historian, author most recently of American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity

(Penguin, 2015) and Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides (Viking, 2003), which won the Massachusetts Book Award for nonfiction. The Humanities Institute lecture is based on his latest research project.

The lecture is co-sponsored with the Department of Political Science,  the Asian and Asian-American Studies Institute, and Humanities Institute.

 

February 28th, 2017. The Public Discourse Project Seminar: Maura Priest.

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Title: Epistemic Greed

Maura Priest

Abstract: My paper argues that epistemologists and ethicists have overlooked the importance of a dangerous vice (epistemic greed). I explain what this vice is and why it is a problem. In so doing my paper sheds light on the following questions: Is the behavior of epistemic elites, (a) really much different from billionaires discussing expensive wines on a millionaire dollar yacht, and (b) do epistemic elites have the same sort of (imperfect) obligation to share in their epistemic wealth as the rich have to share in their economic wealth?

Babbidge Library, 4th Floor, Room 4/209

2/27 Moral Injury after War: Remembrance, Recovery, and Reconciliation

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Monday, February 27, 2007
05:00– 7:30PM
Konover Auditorium in the Thomas Dodd Research Center
Guest Lectures by Joe Brett and David Wood
Book signing by David Wood from 6:30-7:30pm
Open to the Public, free event
 
Moral Injury after War: Remembrance, Recovery, and Reconciliation
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Wood and decorated veteran Joseph Brett will speak on moral injury on Monday, February 27, from 5:00-6:30 pm, at Konover Auditorium on the University of Connecticut campus. From 6:30-7:30pm Wood will be signing his book in the exhibit galleries of the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center (where there will be a reception). The auditorium is located within the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center. Two adjacent exhibits by photographer Robin Albarano and co-curator Jordan Kiper bring attention to the issues of moral wounds and veteran legacies after war. “A Legacy of Veteran Expressions after War” and “Recovery and Reconciliation after the Yugoslav Wars” will be on exhibit until February 28 and March 14, respectively. Brett and Kiper are currently undertaking a reconciliation project with Yugoslav veterans. 
David Wood has covered war and conflict around the world for more than 35 years. His second book, What Have we Done: the Moral Injury of our Longest Wars, is based on his deep reporting in Iraq and Afghanistan and on veterans after they return. Wood is the senior military correspondent for The Huffington Post, where his series on severely wounded veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.
As a Washington-based correspondent since 1980, Mr. Wood has reported on national security issues at the White House, Pentagon and State Department, and has covered conflicts in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Central America. He has accompanied U.S. military units in the field many times, both on domestic and overseas training maneuvers. He is a Future of War Fellow at New America.
Joseph Brett has been a veterans’ champion since his military service in Vietnam. He speaks on a range of veterans’ issues and volunteers his experience to assist in recovery from PTSD and moral injury. He is vice president of the Veterans Heritage Project, an Arizona 501c3 which connects students in 25 high schools with veterans. Their stories are put into books that are sent to the Library of Congress. 
Mr. Brett created and co-hosted the podcast radio shows Veterans Heritage Hour, and Front and Center USA, recorded at Arizona State University with guests from the New America-ASU collaboration on the Center on the Future of War. He also produced two veteran-centric films at Scottsdale Community College Film School. Mr. Brett holds a Master’s Degree with a focus on International Development from Harvard’s Kennedy School and has worked in Indonesia and the former Soviet Union.
 
THE THOMAS DODD RESEARCH CENTER
University of Connecticut
405 Babbidge Road
Storrs, CT 06269-1205
 
The Dodd Center honors Thomas Dodd’s service as Executive Trial Counsel in the International Military Tribunal, the first of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.Sponsored by the Thomas Dodd Research Center, Human Rights Institute, UConn Humanities Institute, the Humility and Conviction in Public Life Project, the Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, the Department of Philosophy, and the James Barnett Chair of Humanistic Anthropology.
 
For more information, contact: The Thomas Dodd Research Center at 860-486-5131or Jordan Kiper at 860-471-6361.

February 23 and 24, 2017. Facilitator Training “Civic Reflection and Facilitated Dialogue” at UCHI

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Led by Deva Woodly (Assistant Professor, Politics, The New School).

February 23, 2017  — 9:00-5:00    &   February 24, 2017  —  9:00-2:00

By pre-registration only.

Sponsored by Humanities Institute / Human Rights Institute 

For more information please send an email to Brendan Kane:  brendan.kane@uconn.edu or Dana Miranda: dana.miranda@uconn.edu

UCHI and Humanities House Collaborate to Talk Careers and the Humanities

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UCHI and Humanities House Collaborate to Talk Careers and the Humanities

UCHI Dissertation Fellow George Moore inaugurated a new collaborative effort between UCHI and Humanities House to help undergraduates interested in the humanities to think about careers and opportunities during and after their BA degree. More than ever, skills in communication, writing, and critical thinking and analysis are crucial in the workplace; a focus in the humanities, whether it be a major or minor, sets students up for success. To answer questions and help undergraduates think about future career strategies, several UCHI fellows will be visiting with Humanities House students for informal conversations about their experiences and research in academia and beyond. Thanks to George for starting this collaboration and dialogue!

DHMS PRESENTATION

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Alan Liu: “Toward Critical Infrastructure Studies: Digital Humanities, New Media Studies, and the Culture of Infrastructure”(University of California, Santa Barbara)

In an era when complexly “smart” and hybrid material-virtual infrastructures ranging from the micro to the macro scale seem to obviate older distinctions between material base and cultural superstructure, how can the digital humanities and new media studies join in an emergent “critical infrastructure studies”? What are the traditions of such studies? What is the topic’s scope? What are some especially high-value areas for intervention by digital humanists and new media scholars/artists? And how can digital scholars in the humanities and arts collaborate with digital social scientists taking up similar matters? In this talk, Alan Liu considers the hypothesis that today’s “cultural studies” is a mode of critical infrastructure studies.

Bio: Alan Liu is Professor in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  He has published books titled Wordsworth: The Sense of History (1989); The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information (2004); and Local Transcendence: Essays on Postmodern Historicism and the Database (2008).  Recent essays include “Hacking the Voice of the Shuttle: The Growth and Death of a Boundary Object” (2016), “Is Digital Humanities a Field?—An Answer from the Point of View of Language” (2016), “N + 1: A Plea for Cross-Domain Data in the Digital Humanities” (2016), “The Big Bang of Online Reading” (2014), “The Meaning of the Digital Humanities” (2013), and “Where is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities?” (2012).  Liu started the Voice of the Shuttle web site for humanities research in 1994.  Projects he has directed include the University of California Transliteracies Project on online reading and the RoSE (Research-oriented Social Environment) software project. Liu is founder and co-leader of the 4Humanities.org advocacy initiative. Currently he is leading the 4Humanities.org big-data, topic-modeling project titled “WhatEvery1Says” on public discourse about the humanities.

Get to Know Our Fellows: Four Questions with Daniel Hershenzon

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-What is your academic background and what is your current position in UCHI/at UConn/Your Home Institution?

My first degree, from the University of Tel Aviv, is a double major of Philosophy and History. Before getting this degree , I was studying industrial design. I left the world of design for the university when I realized that I was enjoying the history and theory classes much more than the design workshops. After receiving my B.A., I continued to study towards a Masters degree and in 2004 enrolled in a PhD program in the Department of History at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I was lucky to spend two years of my graduate studies researching in Spain (in Madrid, Valladolid, Barcelona, and the Canary Islands!), and another year in Florence, Italy, with a postdoctoral fellowship after I graduated. Then, I took my current position at the Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, where I mostly teach medieval and early modern Spanish history.

-What is the project you’re currently working on?

I am completing a book that examines the entangled histories of early modern Spain, Morocco, and Ottoman Algiers, and by extension the entangled lives of Christian and Muslim captives in the region. Captivity was a serious problem in the early modern Mediterranean, and scholars estimate the number of captives, Muslims and Christians, in 2 to 3 millions. The book argues that piracy, captivity, and redemption shaped the sea, a space integrated on the social, economic, and political levels. It demonstrates that despite confessional differences, the lives of Muslim and Christian captives were interrelated and formed part of a single Mediterranean system of bondage. These captivities were connected by a political economy of ransoming shaped by ecclesiastic ransom institutions; Spanish, Ottoman, and Moroccan rulers; captives and kin; and Jewish, Muslim, and Christian ransom intermediaries. They all interacted through texts that captives created and circulated across the sea. The history that emerges from these stories is both local and Mediterranean. It offers a comprehensive analysis of competing Spanish, Algerian, and Moroccan imperial projects intended to shape Mediterranean mobility structures. Simultaneously, the project reveals the tragic upending of the lives of individuals by these imperial maritime political agendas.

-How did you arrive at this topic?

I became interested in captivity when I wrote a seminar paper analyzing the autobiographies of former Spanish captives. I was fascinated by how ex captives sought to convince their readers that they did not convert to Islam during their captivity, and yet, their accounts abound with different forms of religious, cultural, and imperial boundary crossing. I also began to see how problematic the absence of Muslim captives from this history is. Finally, I was struck by the importance of writing for captives—not only as a medium to make claims about one’s past after ransom, but also during captivity. Captives constantly wrote letters trying to arrange their ransom, and in its turn, this epistolary circulation extended the boundaries of maritime communities across the sea, putting captives in charge of channeling information about community members who had died, converted as captives, or suffered martyrdom. As importantly, researching Mediterranean captivity allowed me to spend two years in the Mediterranean.

-What impact might your work have on a larger public understanding of your topic?

As a historian, I engage in debates on the emergence of European territorial identities, cross-Mediterranean maritime networks, the political economy of forced migration, and the struggle between state and church over that mobility’s control and meaning. I do so by analyzing early modern interactions among 17th century Christian and Muslim captives, enslavers, redeeming friars, merchants, and rulers who struggled to shape piracy, slavery, and redemption according to their shifting vision – religious, economic, and political. The multiple cross-maritime interactions I explore do more than counter an image of a declining 17th-century Mediterranean dissolving into nation-states. They force us to rethink early modern Europe and its others questioning how seemingly European territorial identities were shaped by transnational maritime networks and their transformation. In this sense, the framework that my book proposes for the history of the early modern Mediterranean and Europe have repercussions beyond that specific history and can provide a lens through which to understand the current ongoing crisis surrounding mobility across the sea.