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Why Support the Humanities? An Interview with Joyce A. Scott

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A photograph of Joyce Scott, a white woman with short grey hair.Joyce A. Scott retired from Texas A&M University-Commerce as Professor of Higher Education, after serving 32 years in academic administration at four public universities, a national association, and a state university system. She holds a BA in French and English from the University of Connecticut, an MA in French from the University of Virginia, and a Ph.D. in Romance Languages from Duke University. She is an avid supporter of the UConn Humanities Institute.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. If you would like to support the work of the Institute, please see our giving page.

What first drew you to the study of literature?

I was read to from early childhood, all the time, and I was fascinated by storytelling. As I became able to read, I started taking off on my own, pursuing various adventures. Studying literature was therefore a continuation of a lifetime habit, the point being to get inside other lives and minds, to learn other cultures, or to learn about other cultures. It was a way of broadening my outlook, to travel the world without leaving home. I think one of the things that most fascinated me and kept me studying literature all the way through the doctorate was the cultural exploration. Being brought up in immediately post–World War II United States was a fairly anodyne experience, and exploring the rest of the world and other people’s perspectives and ideas was fascinating to me. So I just kept going. It was so much fun.

What makes you think it’s especially important to support the humanities now?

I was brought up in the mode of the Enlightenment and the application of reason to solve problems, to explore truth and knowledge, and that seems to have gone out the window. We have fake news. We have problems of communication, where effectively lies are repeated and repeated and repeated just to instill mistrust in the other. I think that the humanities foster effective communication, effective modes of inquiry, which we seem to be ignoring or disclaiming these days. We are manipulated by technology, by politicians and other public figures. The humanities help us to broaden our perspective and to test the allegations of this cultural moment and to explore what is truth. The recent Nobel laureate Maria Ressa talks about the integrity of facts, and what has happened in the present cultural moment is that facts have been undermined. The humanities give us a way back to understanding and knowing what is truth, what is real.

What makes you committed to supporting the work of the Humanities Institute at UConn?

As I said earlier, the whole issue of what is true and what isn’t becomes critical in these days, and much of the work of the Institute addresses the kinds of concerns that I have raised. The whole project the Future of Truth directly responds to my concerns. When I visited the Institute a couple of years back, pre-pandemic, there was a workshop with public school teachers going on, focusing on effective communication and being able to communicate the values of the humanities to students. Workshops and other public-facing events are extremely important in this particular time in alerting people to other ways of examining truth and other ways of finding truth—critical inquiry. I think we have far too little of that in our public life, and I was delighted to see that public school teachers were on campus and discussing important issues with faculty and students in the Humanities Institute. I had a very traditional, old-school education, and I remember my stepfather, who was an MD/Ph.D. microbiologist, saying to me in my junior year as an English and French major, Couldn’t you do something useful? I now see that it is useful, that the Institute is doing something valuable and, in fact, spreading the word. Communicating the value of the humanities is extremely important in this time.

20 Years of Fellows: Margo Machida

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As part of our 20th anniversary celebrations, we've checked in with former fellows to gather reflections on their fellowship years, to get an update on their fellowship projects, and to see what they are working on next. Read them all here.

Margo Machida at the Honolulu Museum of Art, standing between two sculptures of faces, mounted on the wall.2010–11 Faculty Fellow Margo Machida is Professor Emerita of Art History (School of Fine Arts) and Asian and Asian American Studies (College of Liberal Arts and Sciences) at the University of Connecticut. Born and raised in Hawai`i, she is a scholar, independent curator, and cultural critic specializing in Asian American art and visual culture. Her most recent book is Unsettled Visions: Contemporary Asian American Artists and the Social Imaginary, published by Duke University Press in 2009. This book received the prestigious Cultural Studies Book Award from the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) in 2011. She also co-edited the award-winning volume Fresh Talk/Daring Gazes: Conversations on Asian American Art (University of California Press, 2003). She is the 2021 recipient of the prestigious CAA Award for Excellence in Diversity.

What was your fellowship project about?

My 2010–2011 fellowship project, “Resighting Hawai‘i: Global Flows and Island Imaginaries in Asian American and Native Hawaiian Art,” profiled work by fifteen living artists of Asian, Indigenous Hawaiian, and mixed heritages. Drawing on the extensive oral history interviews I conducted with these artists, this project investigated how their visual production negotiates complexly entwined histories, conflicts, and claims to place in the Hawaiian Islands and in the Asia Pacific region.

Would you give us an update on the project?

This fellowship research provided the basis for several subsequent publications including: “Remixing Metaphors: Negotiating Multiracial Positions in Contemporary Native Hawaiian Art,” in War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art (University of Washington Press, 2013); “Trans-Pacific Sitings: The Roving Imagery of Lynne Yamamoto,” in Third Text special issue, “The Transnational Turn: East Asian Mobility” (2014); and “Pacific Itineraries and Oceanic Imaginaries in Contemporary Asian American Art,” in Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas journal (Brill, Spring 2017).

How did your fellowship year shape your project, or shape your scholarship in general?

The fellowship period was an invaluable opportunity to exclusively focus on this research. The transcripts from these digitally recorded interviews provided the primary source material for developing a comparative thematic framework to analyze works of art emerging from Indigenous and ʻsettler’ groups in Hawaiʻi and their continental U.S. diasporas.

Would you share a favorite memory from your time as a UCHI fellow?

I enjoyed the supportive collegial atmosphere and the privilege of being able to listen to work-in-progress, especially from colleagues whose informal talks introduced me to a range of investigative strategies in other fields. Whereas my scholarship is anchored in recorded exchanges with contemporary artists, those sessions likewise conferred a keen appreciation for what could be achieved through sustained archival research.

What are you working on now (or next)?

My research with contemporary Asian American artists is ongoing, including an interest in artists from Hawaiʻi. The scope of my attention has also extended to earlier generations of Asian American modernists from the Hawaiian Islands who traveled to New York and other East Coast cities between the 1930s and 1970s. Their presence in the American art world remains a comparatively understudied subject.

Our theme for UCHI’s 20th anniversary year is “The Future of Knowledge.” What would you say are some of the challenges facing the future of knowledge? And what do you think is most exciting or promising about the future of knowledge?

The COVID pandemic continues to impact life at every level. In this profoundly disruptive and uncertain time—and especially during the 2020 closure of universities and museums—I was moved by the extraordinary generosity shown by colleagues across the United States and abroad who remained readily available to answer research questions online, and to think through complicated issues together. Our exchanges reinforced the signal importance of maintaining durable communities in the collaborative production of knowledge. Collaboration is scarcely a novel concept, but it certainly takes on new valences as the means to share resources and to sustain one another in today’s difficult times.

POSTPONED: The Political Theory Workshop Presents Anna Terwiel

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THE POLITICAL THEORY WORKSHOP PRESENTS

Beyond the Prison: The Politics of Abolition

Anna Terwiel, Political Science, Trinity College
with commentary by Benjamin Stumpf, Political Science, UConn
February 25, 2022 April 1, 2022 from 12:15–1:30pm, Oak 408 and by Zoom

Many contemporary abolitionists argue that “carceral feminists” have contributed to mass incarceration by supporting criminal justice approaches to end sexual and gender violence. Instead of the criminal justice system, these “abolition feminists” advocate grassroots transformative justice initiatives that work outside of state institutions and the law. Community justice initiatives often showcase powerful assertions of feminist political agency, as Terweil shows through a close examination of Communities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA). However, she argues that abolition feminists’ anti-statism ultimately limits their ability to realize widespread radical change. She challenges this anti-statism by showing, first, that in other contexts, prominent abolitionists seek to seize state capacities and resources. Such efforts are important, Terweil suggests, not only to address the root causes of harm but also to counter right-wing militias and other forms of neoliberal and conservative anti-statism. She concludes by suggesting that some legal-institutional proposals of earlier European abolitionist scholar-activists, who oppose prisons and criminal law but see a role for the state in facilitating restorative justice processes, could productively inform US abolitionism.

Anna Terwiel is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Trinity College. Her research engages political theory, feminist theory, critical carceral studies, and medical humanities. She is currently completing a book project, The Challenge of Prison Abolition, which aims to clarify abolitionism’s goals and strengthen its outcomes by carefully engaging with its internal tensions and debates. Her articles have been published in Political Theory, New Political Science, Theory & Event, and Social Philosophy Today.

Benjamin Stumpf is a doctoral student in political theory at UConn.

With generous support from the UConn Humanities Institute.

Questions? Email jane.gordon@uconn.edu

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Fellow’s Talk: Prakash Kashwan on Rethinking Academic Hierarchies

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UCHI Fellow's Talk: Liberal vs Useful Arts? Rethinking Academic Hierarchies in a (Mal)Connected World. Associate Professor of Political Science, UConn, Prakash Kashwan with a response by Drew Johnson. March 2, 2022, 4:00pm, HBL 4-209.

“Liberal” vs “Useful” Arts? Rethinking Academic Hierarchies in a (Mal)Connected World

Prakash Kashwan (Associate Professor, Political Science, UConn)

with a response by Drew Johnson (Philosophy, UConn)

Wednesday, March 2, 2022, 4:00pm, HBL 4-209

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The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend virtually.

Contemporary calls for the fusion of ‘humanities’ and ‘sciences’ stand atop a long history of a hierarchical world view that separated the intellectual pursuits of liberal arts from the less prestigious fields of mechanical or ‘useful’ arts. While liberal arts were believed to be the domain of ‘free men,’ useful arts were meant for ‘slaves and serfs.’ Prakash Kashwan asks how living legacies of such a hierarchal view of academia might haunt the pursuit of ‘interdisciplinary’ research, which itself has been come under heavy criticism from radical social thinkers and philosophers. Kashwan asks what such a-priori characterization of any intellectual pursuit means for our collective ability to contribute to realizing justice outcomes in a mal-connected world. He engages the audience in centering human agency and ingenuity in diverse intellectual pursuits aimed at smashing the status quo toward a liberating and transformative world making.

Prakash Kashwan is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Research Program on Economic and Social Rights, Human Rights Institute, University of Connecticut, Storrs. He is the author of the widely reviewed book Democracy in the Woods: Environmental Conservation and Social Justice in India, Tanzania, and Mexico (Oxford University Press, 2017), editor of Climate Justice in India (Cambridge University Press, July 2022), co-editor of the journal Environmental Politics, and the co-founder of Climate Justice Network. Dr. Kashwan is also the vice-chair of the Environmental Studies Section of the International Studies Association (ISA), and serves on the editorial advisory boards of Earth Systems Governance, Progress in Development Studies, Sage Open, and Humanities & Social Sciences Communications. His public-facing writings have appeared in popular venues, such as The Conversation, the Guardian, Al-Jazeera and the Washington Post.

Drew Johnson is a Philosophy PhD candidate at the University of Connecticut. His dissertation project, “A Hybrid Theory of Ethical Thought and Discourse,” examines the nature and function of ethical thought and discourse. Drew has published on skepticism, deep disagreement and intellectual humility, and on self-knowledge (including co-authored work with Dorit Bar-On). During the Summer of 2019, he was the recipient of the Ruth Millikan Graduate Research Fellowship, awarded by the UConn Philosophy Department. Drew is currently a Dissertation Scholar at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute.

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.

Let’s Talk about the 1619 Project

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Let's talk about the 1619 project with Prof Dexter Gabriel. For UConn undergraduates, March 23, 2022, 2:00pm, HBL 4-209.

Let’s Talk about…

The 1619 Project

with Prof. Dexter Gabriel (Assistant Professor, History & Africana Studies, UConn)

March 23, 2022, 2:00pm. Homer Babbidge Library, 4-209.

This is an honors event.

The CLAS Dean’s office and UCHI invite UConn undergraduates to participate in a discussion group about the 1619 Project—an initiative to rethink the history of the United States led by Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and the New York Times Magazine. Professor Dexter Gabriel will lead the discussion and help guide students in this important dialogue about reframing national history, the legacies of American slavery, and the controversies surrounding the 1619 Project. The first 40 students to register will receive a free ebook of The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, and all participants are invited to attend Nikole Hannah-Jones’ talk at the Student Union Theater on March 30th.

REGISTER

Fellow’s Talk: Kathryn Moore on the Fractal Tree of Life

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2021–22 UCHI fellow's talk. Leonardo da Vinci and the Fractal Tree of Life. Assistant Professor, Art and Art History, Kathryn Moore. With a response by Meina Cai. February 23, 2022, 4:00pm. Homer Babbidge library, 4-209.

Leonardo Da Vinci and the Fractal Tree of Life

Kathryn Moore (Assistant Professor, Art and Art History, UConn)

with a response by Meina Cai (Political Science, UConn)

Wednesday, February 23, 2022, 4:00pm, HBL 4-209

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The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

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This paper will explore the relationship between Leonardo da Vinci’s theories of the geometry of dynamic systems in nature and his artistic output, from c. 1497 until his death in 1519. Working in various media, from his frescoes depicting an artificial garden in the Sala delle Asse and related knot engravings, to his various drawings of geometry and anatomy in his notebooks, Leonardo visualized aspects of complexity beyond verbal description. In these various contexts, the fractal tree of life emerged as a primary model for natural systems that grow over time, from the microcosm of an individual human organ to the macrocosm of the earth.

Kathryn Blair Moore, Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Connecticut, researches in the medieval and Renaissance periods in Europe and the Mediterranean region. Her book, The Architecture of the Christian Holy Land: Reception from Late Antiquity through the Renaissance (Cambridge University Press, 2017), focused upon the architectural legacy of Jerusalem and the Holy Land more generally. With Hasan-Uddin Khan, she is co-editor of The Religious Architecture of Islam (Brepols, 2021 and 2022). Her second monograph focuses upon arabesques in a European context. She has been a fellow of Harvard University’s Villa I Tatti and the American Academy in Rome.

Meina Cai is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Asian/Asian American Studies Institute at UConn. Her research focuses on the political economy of development and institutions. She is currently working on land property rights, urbanization, and rural governance in China. She is a UCHI fellow in 2021–2022.

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.

20 Years of Fellows: Dexter Gabriel

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As part of our 20th anniversary celebrations, we've checked in with former fellows to gather reflections on their fellowship years, to get an update on their fellowship projects, and to see what they are working on next. Read them all here.

Headshot of Dexter Gabriel2018–2019 Faculty Fellow Dr. Dexter Gabriel is Assistant Professor of History at UConn. He earned his B.A. in history from Texas State University-San Marcos, an M.A. in history also from Texas State University-San Marcos, and his Ph.D. in history from Stony Brook University-New York. His research interests include the history of bondage, resistance, and freedom in the Black Atlantic, as well as interdisciplinary approaches to slavery within popular culture and media. His current research explores British Emancipation in the Anglo-Caribbean and its impact on abolitionist strategies in nineteenth-century North America. His work has been translated into the social arena through panel discussions, lectures, articles, and interviews as diverse as the Federal Reserve Bank of Virginia to Voice of America, BBC America, and elsewhere

What was your fellowship project about?

I was working on turning my dissertation into a book manuscript for submittal. Titled Jubilee’s Experiment, it explored the impact of British Emancipation on American abolitionism in the 19th century.

Would you give us an update on the project?

The manuscript is currently under contract with Cambridge University Press.

How did your fellowship year shape your project, or shape your scholarship in general?

I was able to use that invaluable time to really think through my project. Dissertations are inherently different from book manuscripts, and I was able to go about the process of trying to imagine what those differences were and how they could coalesce into a working narrative.

Would you share a favorite memory from your time as a UCHI fellow?

Sitting and sharing tea, coffee, and dessert with other fellows—talking about our work, the challenges we were facing, and just talking about academic life in general.

What are you working on now (or next)?

Finishing up for final submission of the book manuscript. Next up, research for a book project on African American emigration to the Caribbean during the 19th century.

Our theme for UCHI’s 20th anniversary year is “The Future of Knowledge.” What would you say are some of the challenges facing the future of knowledge? And what do you think is most exciting or promising about the future of knowledge?

Perhaps one of the greatest challenges we’re facing comes ironically from our success. Thanks to technology today, we can both access knowledge and disperse it in ways before unimagined. We are quite literally in an age of boundless information. At the same time, interpreting that information, discerning fact from fiction, and outright misinformation, has become a serious problem. What gives promise is that despite these challenges, it does show that people are still curious about the world around them, about the past, and their place in the world. I don’t think that quest for knowledge is disappearing from the human experience any time soon.

DHMS: Teaching Machines

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Poster with headshot of Audrey Watters and text that reads: Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning, by Audrey Watters. Live. Online. Registration required. February 17, 2022, 4:00pm. Co sponsored by the center for excellence in teaching and learning and the Neag School of Education.

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 and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities. The event will be presented with automated transcription.

The Digital Humanities and Media Studies Initiative presents:

Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning

with Audrey Watters

February 17, 2022, 4:00–5:00pm
Live • Online • Registration required

Join us to hear Audrey Watters speak about her latest book, Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning (MIT Press), which tells the pre-digital history of “personalized learning.” Watters demonstrates that the history of ed tech does not begin with videos on the internet, or even with the personal computer. Her book instead focuses on early twentieth-century teaching machines, the psychological theories that underpinned them, how they were reported on in the media, and how they shaped and were shaped by the cultures in which they were produced.

Audrey Watters is a writer and independent scholar who focuses on education technology—its politics and its pedagogical implications. Although she was two chapters into her Comparative Literature dissertation, she decided to abandon academia, and she now happily fulfills the one job recommended to her by a junior high aptitude test: freelance writer. She has written for The Baffler, The Atlantic, Vice, Hybrid Pedagogy, Inside Higher Ed, The School Library Journal, and elsewhere across the Web, but she is best known for the work on her own website Hack Education. Audrey has given keynotes and presentations on education technology around the world and is the author of several books, including The Monsters of Education Technology, The Revenge of the Monsters of Education Technology, The Curse of the Monsters of Education Technology, The Monsters of Education Technology 4, and Claim Your Domain. Her latest book, Teaching Machines (MIT Press), examines the pre-history of “personalized learning.” Audrey was a recipient of the Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship at Columbia University for the 2017–2018 academic year.

Cosponsored by the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and the Neag School of Education.

In advance of her talk we will be hosting a book discussion on Teaching Machines February 10 at 3:00pm.

20 Years of Fellows: Joseph Ulatowski

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As part of our 20th anniversary celebrations, we've checked in with former fellows to gather reflections on their fellowship years, to get an update on their fellowship projects, and to see what they are working on next. Read them all here.

Headshot of Joseph Ulatowski2019–2020 Visiting Fellow Joseph Ulatowski is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, and Director of the Experimental Philosophy Research Group at the University of Waikato. His research focus is the nature and value of truth, the problem of action individuation, self-narratives, and practical challenges that arise from these theoretical areas. His approach to these matters is pluralistic, employing both traditional philosophical methods and empirical methods.

What was your fellowship project about?

My fellowship project explored the fundamental question: why do facts matter? The philosophical study of facts has largely focused upon metaphysical questions: What are facts? What is their structure? Do they even have a nature? In the book resulting from the fellowship project, aptly titled Why Facts Matter, I investigate how our answers to these questions are driven by contextual factors and pragmatic considerations. The metaphysics of facts has to be responsive to practical considerations. If this is correct, then what facts are is sensitive to whether and how they are valued.

Would you give us an update on the project?

The book is nearly complete, but then again I imagine any author would say that. Over the course of this project, I have witnessed how our collective relationship to facts has evolved. While I think we have a greater appreciation of facts, some people, what I call “social bandits,” have become more savvy in evading or manipulating them. Gatekeepers, in conjunction with upholding high standards and practices of one’s discipline, have been charged with protecting facts from these bandits. Yet, as I claim in the book, even these gatekeepers are susceptible to psychological biases and colonialist attitudes. Because of this ever-evolving situation, I get stuck into closing and reopening parts of chapters I had thought were complete. So, nearly complete!

How did your fellowship year shape your project, or shape your scholarship in general?

I left the Institute with a much different and, to my mind, far better project than the one I entered with. Before my year at UCHI, I thought of my project as constrained to the philosophical problem of facts. A project on facts, I quickly learned, should be informed not just by what philosophers have said about them but by what others working in the humanities and sciences more generally say about them. The discussions and conversations I had with others at UCHI reshaped the project, allowing me to bring ideas from the history and philosophy of science, literature, sociology, anthropology, and psychology to bear on why facts matter.

Would you share a favorite memory from your time as a UCHI fellow?

The AY 2019–2020 was likely one of the most unusual academic years in modern memory because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite that, if there was a moment that stood out to me, it was Nathan Braccio’s talk on Algonquian and English spatial understandings of New England. Listening to his presentation and speaking with him throughout the year recalibrated my understanding of the purpose of maps. Here was my naïve view: maps represent how things stand in the world. Maps are pictorial facts! Nathan’s presentation brought to light that maps are a means of expressing how one understands and appreciates the space around them. My naïve view of facts was shattered; hearing about Nathan’s project was a watershed moment that began my thinking more perspicuously about a fact’s normative value and how such value plays a much more significant role in the nature of facts than philosophers had acknowledged.

What are you working on now (or next)?

While I am finishing Why Facts Matter, two projects are on my mind. One is a project with my University of Waikato colleague, Jeremy Wyatt. In collaboration with an international team of scholars, we’ve undertaken a University-funded project called Truth without Borders. The main purpose of this project is to better appreciate how truth is used, understood, and valued in different languages. The second project is in a more nascent stage. Tentatively titled, War of the Words: Truth and Virtue in Everyday Communication, I question what it means for truth to win out over falsehood in a marketplace of ideas and attempt to deal with deeply polarized views, whether in politics or elsewhere, by arguing that we should institute rules of conversational conduct to govern our speech acts, much like we institute rules of conduct in war.

Our theme for UCHI’s 20th anniversary year is “The Future of Knowledge.” What would you say are some of the challenges facing the future of knowledge? And what do you think is most exciting or promising about the future of knowledge?

The paramount challenge facing the future of knowledge is the jaded, one-dimensional and westernized view that Enlightenment science is going to solve all the riddles, puzzles, and paradoxes of humanity. Indigenous knowledges and epistemologies, like those found in Māori and Pasifika communities, not only deserve to be a resource for science but they should be a driving force in the sciences. Such epistemologies have been unjustly suppressed and marginalized because of an overly colonialist perspective that science be restricted to one-way of doing it. Providing intellectual space and listening intently to Indigenous knowledges and epistemologies is likely the most promising and exciting prospect for the future of knowledge.