Faculty Talks

NEW DATE: Faculty Talk: Julian Schlöder on the Inauthentic Self

Posted on March 18, 2024March 18, 2024 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

What is an Inauthentic Self?

Julian Schlöder (Assistant Research Professor, Philosophy, UConn)

Wednesday March 27, 2024, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Although these are common phrases, it is somewhat unclear what it is to “be something one is not” or to “not be one’s authentic self.” There is, after all, no other source of selfhood than who one actually is. One also owes to no-one a particular way of being other than to oneself. But given that therefore the self is its own’s only yardstick, how can there be an inauthentic self? Towards an answer, I explore a conception of selfhood as meaning-making. One’s self-narrative creates meaning from bare facticity and is hence is not just something we tell about ourselves, but it is how we articulate our very self. Self-narratives can apprehend themselves as more or less coherent meaning-makers, so a self can fall short of its own standards. From this theoretical standpoint, I explore how stereotypes inflict damage onto selves by standing in the way of meaning-making, and how coming out as a queer identity is to create meaning from incoherence.

Julian J. Schlöder is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut. They studied philosophy, mathematics, and logic at the Universities of Bonn and Amsterdam, receiving their doctorate in 2018. They are a co-author of the monograph Reasoning with Attitude (Oxford UP, 2023).

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.

Faculty Talk: Elizabeth Della Zazzera on French Poetry Almanacs

Posted on March 7, 2024March 19, 2024 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

“The French Left Maastrich on May 4”: Time, Place, and French Poetry Almanacs

Elizabeth Della Zazzera (Assistant Professor in Residence, History, UConn)

Wednesday March 20, 2024, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

On the May souvenir page of her 1814 copy of Hommage aux dames, Henriette Françoise Louise Rigano recorded that her husband, Albert Prisse, had traveled to Paris on May 19. On that same page, she wrote that “the French left Maastricht on May 4,” juxtaposing the movements of her family members with the history of the collapse of Napoleon’s European empire. Hommage aux dames was one of a series of very similar almanac titles (Almanach des dames, Almanach dédié aux demoiselles, etc.) produced in France and marketed to women in the first decades of the nineteenth century. This talk will explore how these almanacs, which were primarily poetry anthologies with calendars and sometimes souvenir pages attached, shifted the almanac’s relationship to locality and to time, not only because of their content and format, but also because of how they were used.

Elizabeth Della Zazzera is an assistant professor in residence in the University of Connecticut’s History department and Director of Communications & Undergraduate Outreach at the UConn Humanities Institute. A historian of modern Europe, she received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016. Her scholarship focuses on how ideas move on the ground—how their method of transmission and dissemination affects the ideas themselves—with a particular emphasis on the intellectual history of material texts and urban environments in revolutionary and post-revolutionary France. Her current book project explores the role of the periodical press, the theatre, and literary sociability in the bataille romantique: the conflict between romantics and classicists. She is also working on a project about French literary almanacs in the early nineteenth century. Her article, “Translating Revolutionary Time: French Republican Almanacs in the United States” was awarded the 2015 Book History essay prize.

Access note

Faculty Talk: Evelyn Simien on Historic U.S. Elections

Posted on January 25, 2024 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

The Last Shall Be First: Historic Candidates in U.S. Elections

Evelyn Simien (Professor, Political Science, UConn)

Wednesday February 7, 2024, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Evelyn Simien’s book project, “The Last Shall Be First: Historic Candidates in U.S. Elections,” will show that historic first candidates have long-standing effects on new segments of the American polity, whether they win or lose, their campaigns revitalize American democracy and legitimize our political institutions. Utilizing in-depth, mixed methods case studies of historic candidates at the local, state, and national levels, the book length project situates historic firsts in terms of their ability to restore confidence in a polarized nation by renewing faith in fair elections, inspiring civic engagement, and cultivating trust in government. These case studies are complemented by opinion data, voter turnout reports, election maps, textual analysis of campaign rhetoric, and content analysis of newspapers. The rich array of sources—photographs, speeches, interviews, and election maps—used for this project will take the form of a digital archive.

Evelyn M. Simien is professor of political science at the University of Connecticut. She is also Interim Director of the Africana Studies Institute at UConn. Simien received her B.A. in political science from Xavier University of Louisiana, along with her master’s degree and Ph.D. in political science from Purdue University. Simien is the author of two books Black Feminist Voices in Politics (State University of New York Press, 2006), and Historic Firsts: How Symbolic Empowerment Changes U.S. Politics (Oxford University Press, 2016), and editor of Gender and Lynching (Palgrave/Macmillan 2011) and Historic Firsts in U.S. Elections: Trailblazing Candidates (Routledge, 2022).