Fellowship

Announcing the 2025–26 Humanities Institute Fellows

Posted on April 16, 2025April 17, 2025 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

The University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) is proud to announce its incoming class of humanities fellows. We are excited to host four dissertation scholars (including the Draper Dissertation Fellow and the Richard Brown Dissertation Fellow), four undergraduate fellows, eight faculty fellows (including the Justice, Equity, and Repair Fellow and the Faculty Success Fellow), and one external fellow. We have fellows representing a broad swath of disciplines, including History; English; Sociology; Linguistics; Anthropology; Plant Science; American Studies; Literatures, Cultures, and Languages; Psychology; Human Rights; and Social and Critical Inquiry. Their projects cover time frames from the medieval world to the present day; and engage topics from prison book bans, to disability in film, to environmental justice. For more information on our fellowship program see our Become a Fellow page. Welcome fellows!

Visiting Fellow

Jennifer Cazenave (Romance Studies—French, Boston University)
“Lessons in Seeing: Disability in the Film and Media Archive”

Undergraduate Fellows

Nicholas Borgesi (Linguistics & Psychology, Project advisor: Manuela Wagner)
“Deconstructing ‘Good’ English in Higher Education: Linguistic Racism, Decolonization and a Case for Increased Accessibility”

Josephine Burke (Political Science & Human Rights, Project advisor: Sandy Grande)
“Book Bans in Prison: The Impact of Censorship on Prison Postsecondary Education”

Suleen Kareem (Philosophy & Human Rights, Project advisors: Brendan Kane & Nana Amos)
“Gendered Resistance in Genocide: Women’s Histories of Survival and Activism in the Middle East”

Autumn Scott (History, Project advisor: Robert J. Hasenfratz)
“Trinities in World Mythology: How and Why Geographically Separate Cultures Construct the Same Cosmology”

Dissertation Research Scholars

Ahmed AboHamad (Philosophy)
“Reconceptualizing Virtue and Flourishing Under Structural Oppression”

Catalina Alvarado-Cañuta (Anthropology)
Richard Brown Dissertation Fellow
“Mapuche Art as a Means of Healing Historical Traumas”

Asmita Asaavari (Sociology)
“Who Will Take Care of Me? Aging and Care in Northeast Connecticut”

Ashmita Mukherjee (Literatures, Cultures, and Languages)
Draper Dissertation Fellow
“Textual Pleasures: Literature of Amusement in Post/colonial India (1850–1950)”

UConn Faculty Fellows

April Anson (English & Social and Critical Inquiry)
JER Fellow
“Unfenceable: American Ecofascism, Literary Genre, and Native American Environmental Justice”

Peter Constantine (Literatures, Cultures, and Languages)
“Indigenous Language Reclamation: Reviving Extinct Languages”

Najnin Islam (English)
“Recasting the Coolie: Racial Capitalism, Caste, and Indian Indentureship in the Caribbean”

Julia Smachylo (Landscape Architecture & Plant Science)
“Silvic Stewardship: Incentivizing Environmental Care in the Northeast”

Fiona Somerset (Social and Critical Inquiry & Literatures, Cultures, and Languages)
“Silence is Consent: The Idea of Complicity in the Middle Ages”

Kathleen Tonry (English)
Faculty Success Fellow
“Time, Work, and Texts in Late-Medieval England”

Harry van der Hulst (Linguistics & Literatures, Cultures, and Languages)
“Why Sign Languages Are Real Languages”

Christopher Vials (English & American Studies)
“Authoritarian Agency: The Far Right in US Culture”

Dissertation Fellowship Application Workshop

Posted on November 13, 2024November 13, 2024 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.

Dissertation Fellowship Application Workshop

November 20, 2022, 3:30 pm

UCHI Conference Room, Homer Babbidge Library.

Announcing the 2024–25 Humanities Institute Fellows

Posted on April 24, 2024April 24, 2024 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

The University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) is proud to announce its incoming class of humanities fellows. We are excited to host four dissertation scholars (including the Draper Dissertation Fellow and the Richard Brown Dissertation Fellow), four undergraduate fellows, eight faculty fellows (including the Faculty of Color Working Group Fellow and the Faculty Success Fellow), and three external fellows. We have fellows representing a broad swath of disciplines, including History; English; Sociology; Linguistics; Anthropology; Classics; Art & Art History; American Studies; Literatures, Culture and Languages; Drama; and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Their projects take many forms including scholarly monographs, plays, and books of photography; span time frames from the ancient world to the present day; and cover topics from sign language, to enslavement, to health and disease. For more information on our fellowship program see our Become a Fellow page. Welcome fellows!

Visiting Fellows

Sara Matthiesen (History & Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, George Washington University)
“‘Free Abortion on Demand’ after Roe: A Reproductive Justice History of Abortion Organizing in the United States”

Jesse Olsavsky (American Studies & History, Duke Kunshan University)
“In The Tradition: The Abolitionist Tradition and the Roots of Pan-Africanism, 1830–1945”

Heather Ostman (English, SUNY Westchester Community College)
“Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Religion, and the Search for Grace”

Undergraduate Fellows

Kathryn Andronowitz (Project advisor: Bhoomi K. Thakore)
“The Tradwife Cultural Economy: A Comparative Case Study of Self-Branded Housewife Influencers on Social Media”

Kanny Salike (Project advisor: Diane Lillo-Martin)
“The Evolution of African American English (AAE) and Black American Sign Language (BASL) in the United States”

Hailey Strom (Project advisor: Sara R. Johnson)
“The Self and the Other: Perceptions of Identity in Ancient Greece and the Achaemenid Empire”

Evan Wolfgang (Project advisor: Gary M. English)
“I Am Going to the Lordy: A Dramatic Parable about the Life and Death of Charles Julius Guiteau”

Dissertation Research Scholars

Joscha Jelitzki (Literatures, Culture, and Languages)
Richard Brown Dissertation Fellow
“The Anti-Jewish ‘Lust Libel’ and its Deconstruction by Jewish Writers in Modern Vienna”

Yusuf Mansoor (History)
Draper Dissertation Fellow
“Native Americans in Tangier: Slaveries in the Early Modern Atlantic World”

Danielle Pierratti (English)
“Unoriginal: Transvocal works from Dante’s Purgatorio”

Julia Wold (English)
“Adapting Choice: Shakespeare, Video Games, and Early Modern Thought”

UConn Faculty Fellows

César Abadia-Barrero (Anthropology)
“Too Sick to Labor: Disease and Profit as the end of Capitalism”

Daniel Hershenzon (Literatures, Culture, and Languages)
“The Maghrib in Spain: Enslavement, Citizenship, and Belonging in the Early Modern Spanish Mediterranean”

Yohei Igarashi (English)
Faculty Success Fellow
“Word Count: Literary Study and Data Analysis, 1875–1965”

Hana Maruyama (History)
“Entangled Remains: Indigenous Relationalities & Caretaking in Japanese American Incarceration”

Gregory Pierrot (English)
“It Was Nation Time: Fictions of African American Revolution (Le Temps d’une nation noire: fictions révolutionnaires du Black Power)”

Janet Pritchard (Art and Art History)
“Abiding River: Connecticut River Views & Stories”

Fumilayo Showers (Sociology)
Faculty of Color Working Group Fellow
“Learning to Leave: Health Professions Education, the Afropolitan Imaginary, and Migration Aspirations in a Migrant Sending Nation.”

Peter Zarrow (History)
“A History of the ‘Museumification’ of the Forbidden City, Beijing, from 1900 to Today”

Writing a Successful Grant or Fellowship Application

Posted on October 24, 2023November 1, 2023 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

The Faculty Success Initiative presents:

Writing a Successful Grant or Fellowship Application

with Micki McElya (History, UConn)
Debapriya Sarkar (English, UConn)
and Anna Ziering (Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Oglethorpe University)

November 2, 2023, 2:00pm
Live • Online • Registration required

This panel discussion will feature advice from UCHI alums who occupy the ranks of senior faculty, mid career faculty and junior faculty in the humanities who have been successful in writing grant and fellowship proposals. Please be sure to bring along the first page of a draft of your own proposal (even in the very early stages) for workshopping and feedback.

Micki McElya is a professor of History at the University of Connecticut. She was a UCHI Faculty Fellow in 2021–2022.

Debapriya Sarkar is assistant professor of English at the University of Connecticut. She was a UCHI Faculty Fellow in 2019–2020.

Anna Ziering is assistant professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Oglethorpe University. She was a UCHI Graduate Research Scholar in 2021–2022.

Announcing the 2023–24 Humanities Institute Fellows

Posted on April 6, 2023June 5, 2024 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

The University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) is proud to announce its incoming class of humanities fellows. We are excited to host four dissertation scholars (including the Draper Dissertation Fellow and the Richard Brown Dissertation Fellow), four undergraduate fellows, nine faculty fellows (including the Faculty of Color Working Group Fellow), and three external fellows. We have fellows representing a broad swath of disciplines, including History; English; Anthropology; Philosophy; Political Science; Geography; Digital Media and Design; Literatures, Culture and Languages; Journalism; Law; Africana Studies; and American Studies. Their projects take many forms including scholarly monographs, short story collections, and feature-length films; and they cover topics from women’s activism, to human rights, to Indigenous literacies. For more information on our fellowship program see our Become a Fellow page. Welcome fellows!

Visiting Fellows

Jordan Camp (American Studies, Trinity College)
“The Southern Question”

Alexander Diener (Geography, University of Kansas)
“The Middle of Somewhere: Place Attachment and the Geographies of Being”

Birgit Brander Rasmussen (English, SUNY Binghamton)
“Signs of Resistance, Signs of Resurgence: Indigenous Literacies, New Media, and Anti-Colonial Imaginaries in Native American Literature and Culture”

Undergraduate Fellows

Breanna Bonner (Project advisor: Evelyn Simien)
“‘The Space Between Black and Liberation’: Analyzing Black Women’s Experiences of Intersectional Invisibility Within Liberation Movements”

Annabelle Bergstrom (Project advisor: Julian J. Schlöder)
“Minds Among Minds: A Pragmatist View of the Social and Spiritual Self in a Hyperconnected World”

Brent Freed (Project advisor: Elizabeth Della Zazzera)
“A Revolution Hijacked: Art and Ideology from the Atelier Populaire”

Nathan Howard (Project advisor: Tracy Llanera)
“Homofascism: The Queering of Hate”

Honorable mention: Gianna Socci, “Monstrosity on Trial: Claiming Legal Personhood for Frankenstein’s Monster”

Dissertation Research Scholars

Kathryn Angelica (History)
Draper Dissertation Fellow
“An Uneasy Alliance: Cooperation and Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Black and White Women’s Activism”

David Evans (History)
“Hunger for Rights: Establishing the Human Right to Food, 1930—1988”

Geoffrey Hedges-Knyrim (Anthropology)
“Political Power during the Iron Age of the Southern Levant Through the Lens of Agricultural Production”

Xu Peng (Literatures, Culture, and Languages)
Richard Brown Dissertation Fellow
“From History to the Future: Chineseness in Contemporary Cuban, Puerto Rican and Dominican Literatures and Cultures”

UConn Faculty Fellows

Zehra Arat (Political Science)
“Human Rights Norms in Turkey”

Ana María Díaz-Marcos (Literatures, Culture, and Languages)
“‘A fistful of antifascist energy’: Ernestina Gonzalez Fleischman’s Biography and Writings”

Katerina Gonzalez Seligmann (Literatures, Culture, and Languages & El Instituto)
“Soliarity in Translation: Aimé Césaire and His Cuban Comrades in Art”

Serkan Gorkemli (English)
“You’re Always Welcome Here, a Book of Short Stories”

Martine Granby (Journalism & Africana Studies)
Faculty of Color Working Group Fellow
“Ten Seconds of Sugar”

Oscar Guerra (Digital Media and Design)
“Documenting Mental Health in Migration”

Tracy Llanera (Philosophy)
“The Misfits of Extremism”

Richard Wilson (Law)
“United Against Hate? Punishing Bias Crimes in the United States”

Victor Zatsepine (History)
“Unsettling the Sino-Mongol-Russian Borderlands, 1911–1945”

2023–24 Humanities Research Fellowship Information Session

Posted on January 20, 2023January 20, 2023 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

Humanities Research Fellowship Information Session

January 30, 2023, 2:30pm

Humanities Institute Conference Room, HBL 4-209 and on Zoom. Registration is required for virtual attendees.

We are holding an information session for prospective applicants for the 2023–24 Humanities Research Fellowship—a year-long fellowship for UConn undergraduates pursuing innovative research in the humanities. In this session, we will go over the application process, offer tips and tricks for writing a compelling application, and answer questions.

For more details on the fellowship, see the call for applications. Applications are due February 24, 2023.

ACCESS NOTE

Virtual attendees will have access to automated captioning. If you require accommodations to attend, please email uchi@uconn.edu or contact us by phone at (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpreting, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities.

Call for Applications: 2023–24 Undergraduate Humanities Research Fellowships

Posted on December 5, 2022February 23, 2023 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

The UConn Humanities Institute (UCHI) and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) are excited to once again offer year-long fellowships for undergraduate students pursuing innovative research in the humanities.

The fellowship supports a year-long research project supervised by a UConn faculty member. The project should explore big questions about human society and culture and should lead to an original contribution to your area of study. The exact parameters (length, format, etc) will be set by your faculty advisor. Depending on your major and your academic and professional plans, your project may consist of a scholarly research project or a creative product with a significant research component. At the end of the year, students will submit the final project to their faculty advisor, UCHI, and CLAS.

The project should ask questions or explore issues and ideas that feel urgent and exciting to you. We highly encourage proposals for projects that use methods, ideas, and approaches from more than one discipline.

Fellows will be welcomed as members of the Humanities Institute, a lively community of accomplished faculty and graduate student scholars conducting advanced research in the humanities. In addition to immersion in this intellectual community, the fellowship offers:

A $2,000 scholarship
A desk/work area at UCHI, located conveniently in Homer Babbidge Library for conducting research
Bi-weekly check-in meetings
A public presentation about the project at UCHI in the spring semester
Participation at UCHI’s events (for example, presentations by visiting scholars and artists) and special opportunities to meet with such visiting speakers
A field trip or cultural excursion (for example, a visit to a museum or archive) to be announced during the year
The opportunity to present your work at the Humanities Undergraduate Research Symposium the fall following your fellowship year
6 credits for the academic year, through the successful completion of one 3-credit independent study each semester with the UConn faculty member supervising your project
(For non-Honors students) Admission into the Honors Program through the successful completion of this program, if other Honors admissions criteria are met.

Eligibility

Fellowship applicants should be rising sophomores or rising juniors in good academic standing (that is, students who will be sophomores or juniors in Fall 2023). Rising seniors are also eligible to apply, but preference will be given to students earlier in their degrees. Please note that students who applied in previous years and did not receive a fellowship are eligible to apply again.

Fellows from all campuses are welcome. But fellows are expected to be on the Storrs campus for their bi-weekly meetings. In the event that campus is closed for public health reasons, these meetings will be held virtually and the fellowship will be conducted remotely.

The proposed project should be humanities research. Broadly speaking, the “humanities” means the study of human society and culture. Humanities majors or minors typically include but are not limited to: Africana Studies; American Studies; Anthropology; Art and Art History; Asian and Asian American Studies; English; History; Human Rights; Journalism; Latino and Latin American Studies; Philosophy; Sociology; Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. If you aren’t sure if your project is humanistic, please email uchi@uconn.edu.

Fellows should check individually with the Office of Student Financial Aid Services to ensure that they are eligible to accept the scholarship.

Application

A Word document with answers to the following questions:
1. What is your project’s title?
2. What big question(s) is your project asking, and why are those questions important to you, your community, and society? (maximum 300 words)
3. What is your plan for the project? What work will you do to try to answer its questions? (maximum 300 words)
4. How do you think working on this project contributes to your own goals? (maximum 200 words)
5. Optional question: Are there additional factors in your background or life experience that would help you benefit from this opportunity? Discuss social, economic, educational, or other obstacles, as appropriate. (maximum 300 words)

A writing sample of your best research and writing (for example, your best final paper).
One letter of recommendation from a UConn faculty member that also includes their willingness to supervise the project over the course of an academic year. (The faculty member should email their letter directly to uchi@uconn.edu. There’s no need to wait until the letter is complete to submit the rest of your application.)
An unofficial transcript.

Deadline: ~~Friday, February 24, 2023~~ extended to March 10, 2023

All questions and application materials can be sent to uchi@uconn.edu.

We are hosting an information session for prospective applicants on January 30, 2023 at 2:30pm in the UCHI Conference Room on the fourth floor of Homer Babbidge Library and on Zoom. Virtual attendees must register.

Please know while we will make every effort to review submissions as soon as possible, the materials you submit may not be reviewed immediately upon receipt. Please note that all University employees are mandated reporters of child abuse or child neglect. In addition, UConn employees have responsibilities to report to the Office of Institutional Equity student disclosures of sexual assault and related interpersonal violence; any information you submit in this application is subject to UConn reporting policies. If you feel you need more immediate assistance or support, we encourage you to reach out to the Dean of Students Office and/or Student Health and Wellness- Mental Health. In addition, if you have concerns related to sexual harassment, sexual assault, intimate partner violence and/or stalking, we encourage you to review the resources and reporting options available at: https://titleix.uconn.edu

Dissertation Grant Writing Workshop

Posted on October 31, 2022October 31, 2022 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

Dissertation Grant Writing Workshop

November 7, 2022, 3:00 pm

UCHI Conference Room, Homer Babbidge Library. Registration is required.

The UConn Humanities Institute (UCHI) is offering a workshop to assist graduate students in the preparation of dissertation fellowship applications in the humanities and associated disciplines. Any UConn graduate student interesting in applying to UCHI’s dissertation research fellowship is especially encouraged to attend. UCHI Director, Michael Lynch (Philosophy), and Director of Academic Affairs, Alexis Boylan (Art History and Africana Studies), will lead the workshop.

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!!

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!