News

Welcome to Fall 2024 at UCHI

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Dear Colleagues,

As we begin a new year at the Humanities Institute (UCHI), we are delighted to welcome a new cohort of faculty, graduate and undergraduate fellows, who will spend the year working on a host of fascinating interdisciplinary research projects. We hope that you’ll join us for our weekly fellows’ talks, held on Wednesdays from 3:30–4:45 pm, with a short reception following.

As always, we are eager to support humanities research across the university and offer funding for working groups, conferences and colloquia, and book publications. Thanks to the generous support of the Office of the Vice President for Research, we are particularly proud to offer for funding for research projects that augment the work of the Mellon-Funded Faculty of Color Working Group through a focus on equity, justice, and repair.

UCHI’s theme this year is “Connections/Disconnections.” In an era defined by proliferating connections to technology and a growing loneliness epidemic marked by disconnection from one another, the humanities’ focus on the experiences and the perspectives of others illuminates how we might find community and meaning in the lives we lead. In our scholarship, in our responses to one another’s work, and in the vibrant and powerful conversations we generate in our classrooms, we build the capacity for understanding ourselves and others as we recognize the historical and cultural forces that shape our world.

Wishing you a warm welcome back to campus from myself and the whole team here at UCHI,

Anna Mae Duane
Director, UCHI

Fall 2024 events

Fellow’s Talk: Joscha Jelitzki

September 11, 2024

3:30pm

UCHI Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

Details

Fellow’s Talk: Yusuf Mansoor

September 25, 2024

3:30pm

UCHI Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

Details

Getting the Grant Started: Turning Ideas into Action

September 26, 2024

2:00pm

UCHI Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

Details

Connections/Disconnections: A Conversation on the Loneliness Epidemic

October 1, 2024

3:30pm

Wilbur Cross Reading Room

Details

Fellow’s Talk: Julia Wold

October 9, 2024

3:30pm

UCHI Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

Details

Faculty Talk: Sara Johnson

October 30, 2024

12:30pm

UCHI Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

Details

Fellow’s Talk: Danielle Pieratti

October 30, 2024

3:30pm

UCHI Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

Details

Fellow’s Talk: Daniel Hershenzon

November 6, 2024

3:30pm

UCHI Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

Details

Fellow’s Talk: Hana Maruyama

November 13, 2024

3:30pm

UCHI Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

Details

Faculty Talk: Gary English

November 20, 2024

12:15pm

UCHI Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

Details

Fellow’s Talk: Janet Pritchard

December 4, 2024

3:30pm

UCHI Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

Details

UConn Humanities Institute Awarded NEH Grant to Examine Slavery and AI

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The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a two-year grant of nearly $140,000 to the University of Connecticut for the Humanities Institute (UCHI) to investigate how legacies of slavery are shaping the perception and reception of conversational artificial intelligence. This project, “Bringing the Past to the Future: Slavery and Artificial Intelligence on the Battleground of Popular Culture,” involves the development of a podcast series and scholarly book chapters analyzing how persistent narratives of slavery and servitude have influenced popular understanding of artificial intelligence and humans’ ethical engagement with emerging technologies.

“Bringing the Past to the Future” is funded under The Dangers and Opportunities of Technology: Perspectives from the Humanities (DOT) program, which “supports research that examines technology and its relationship to society through the lens of the humanities, with a focus on the dangers and/or opportunities presented by technology.”

The Principal investigator for the project is Anna Mae Duane, director of the UConn Humanities Institute and Professor of English. Co-principal investigator is Stephen Dyson, Professor of Political Science, and senior personnel includes Jeffrey Dudas, Professor of Political Science.

“This project asserts that science alone cannot provide the wisdom we need to navigate both the challenges and possibilities offered by Artificial Intelligence,” says Duane. “Because we believe that the stories we tell about the past influence how we engage the future, we need to understand how historical legacies of slavery shape how we perceive AI in film, literature, and other forms of popular culture. This work is vital as we move into a future in which concepts of human freedom and human rights could well be shaped by this evolving technology.”

“Bringing the Past to the Future” will unfold over three phases—Past, Present, and Future—in order to create a narrative and theoretical arc that draws on humanities scholarship to illustrate how deeply embedded beliefs about enslavement, freedom, and personhood shape our imaginative engagement with conversational AI. Phase one—Past—will explore the historical foundation of the project, including depictions slavery in popular culture and the role of conversation in anti-slavery arguments. Phase two—Present—will tackle how contemporary popular culture draws on metaphors of slavery to frame the emotional valences of engaging with social robots and conversational AI. And phase three—Future—will focus on how metaphors of enslavement and abolition shape how we imagine future emotional entanglements with AI technologies.

The six podcast episodes will be accompanied by corollary materials, including reading lists and discussion guides, to be hosted on a project website.

The 2024 Sharon Harris Book Award

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UCHI is honored to announce the winner of the Sharon Harris Book Award for 2024:

headshot of Debapriya Sarkar

Debapriya Sarkar

Associate Professor, English, UConn

for her book

Possible Knowledge: The Literary Forms of Early Modern Science (Penn Press, 2023)

The Sharon Harris Book Award Committee notesBook cover for Possible Knowledge by Debapriya Sarkar, “Possible Knowledge brilliantly foregrounds literature as an imaginative and epistemological form, re-conceptualizing literary works that remake reality. A work of broad interdisciplinary relevance, it prompts its readers to reconceive the history of science as a history of the imagination by understanding poeisis, literary making, as a philosophical as well as literary endeavor. The result is at the same time a vigorous defense of the importance of imaginative arts for the creation of knowledge and a demonstration of the enduring relevance of the humanities. It will broaden the mind of its readers.”

Honorable mention:

Jason Oliver Chang
Alexis Dudden headshot

Jason Oliver Chang

Associate Professor, History & Director, Asian and Asian American Studies Institute, UConn

and

Alexis Dudden

Professor, History & Asian and Asian American Studies, UConn

for their book

The Cargo Rebellion: Those Who Chose Freedom (PM Press, 2023)

Book cover for The Cargo RebellionThe Sharon Harris Award Committee notes, “The Cargo Rebellion is an innovative combination of scholarly research and accessible writing that breaks new ground in reaching young audiences. We felt this engaging translation of intellectual expertise offered a fresh model for humanistic and artist collaboration.”

We thank the award committee for their service. The Sharon Harris Book Award recognizes scholarly depth and intellectual acuity and highlights the importance of humanities scholarship. The 2024 award was open to UConn tenured, tenure-track, emeritus, or in-residence faculty who published a monograph between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2023.

Announcing the 2024–25 Humanities Institute Fellows

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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”

Artificial Intelligence and Artistic Endeavor

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Artificial Intelligence and Artistic Endeavor: Pushing the Boundaries of Collaboration and Creativity,Kyle Booten (English, UConn) Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick (Kroc School, University of San Diego), Sue Huang (DMD, UConn). April 18, 3:00pm. Heritage Room, Fourth Floor Homer Babbidge Library.

Artificial Intelligence and Artistic Endeavor: Pushing the Boundaries of Collaboration and Creativity

Kyle Booten (English, UConn)

Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick (Kroc School, University of San Diego)

and Sue Huang (DMD, UConn)

Thursday, April 18, 2024, 3:00pm, Heritage Room, HBL Library, 4th Floor

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend virtually

Join us for an engaging discussion with Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, human rights expert and member of an artists’ collective; Kyle Booten, co-founder of a literary journal dedicated to human-AI co-authored works; and Sue Huang, a visual artist who collaborates with AI. Together, they will explore how AI challenges us to reassess and redefine the concepts of collaboration and creativity.

“Smooth and Jagged Substrates of Thought,” Kyle Booten

In this talk, I’ll suggest that we should care less about whether or not computer-generated text can be “creative” and more about what sorts of human creativity can grow on top of it, on its surface—much the way lichen grows on bark. Sharing examples of my own work designing algorithmic writing assistants, I will suggest that AI-generated text is often unfortunately “smooth,” and I will share some tactics that I used in my recent book (Salon des Fantômes, Inside the Castle, 2024) to try make it more “jagged” and, perhaps, better for cultivating interestingly-shaped thoughts upon.

“Connective Creativity—Why Art is Collective Action, and How that Matters in the Age of AI,” Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick

 

“AI, Ecological Intimacies, and the Disappearing Landscape,” Sue Huang

Huang will present recent research which uses AI, scientific “found data” and natural language processing methods for exploring ecological intimacies between humans and nonhumans. In particular, she will speak about her current project Total Archive, a sci-fi performance and installation piece that explores a series of speculative government reports and “strange” objects found in a time capsule from the future. Prepared by an intern working at a government agency, these documents and artifacts reveal an ecological system in its final throes. The project presents poetry written in part by a fine-tuned AI that processes materials from digitized Smithsonian scientific field books and Internet-found amateur written erotica stories. Visuals in the video installation are derived from text-to-image AI and recombinatory methods that hybridize creatures from over 45,000 species listed in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species database.

Kyle Booten is an assistant professor of English at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. His research explores the ways that small-scale, personalized algorithmic systems may be designed to care for one’s own mind. He is the author of Salon des Fantômes (Inside the Castle, 2014), a book that documents a philosophical salon he attended with a cast of AI-fabricated characters, and the creator of Nightingale, a web extension that re-distracts the user with contextually-relevant excerpts from the poetry of John Keats (available in the Chrome Web Store). His poetry written with algorithmic feedback and interference has been published in Fence, Lana Turner, and Blackbox Manifold; his scholarly writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in electronic book review, Critical AI, and xCoAx ’23.

Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick is an author, educator, and speaker. His work focuses on politics, culture, technology, and social change. His recent books include Wicked Problems (Oxford, 2022), The Good Drone (MIT Press, 2020) and What Slaveholders Think (Columbia, 2017), and his commentary includes articles in Slate, Al Jazeera, and the Guardian and appearances on BBC, NBC, and Fox News. Austin lives in California and holds academic appointments at the University of San Diego and the University of Nottingham.

Sue Huang is a new media artist whose work addresses collective experience. Her research explores ecological intimacies, human/nonhuman relations, and speculative futures. She is currently working on the project Total Archive, a performance work about a time capsule from the future. This project is supported by the Culture Council of the Emerson Collective and Leonardo @ Djerassi for 2024. Huang has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles; the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in Cincinnati; Philadelphia Contemporary; ISEA in Montreal; and Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria; among others. She has previously been an artist-in-residence at LMCC on Governors Island, Creative Science at NEW INC, and the Studios at MASS MoCA. Huang has received funding and project support from Science Sandbox, Rhizome, the James Irvine Foundation (MOCA, Los Angeles), and Creative Scotland (NEoN), the UConn Humanities Institute, among others.She received her MFA in Media Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and her BS in Science, Technology, and International Affairs from the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She is an assistant professor of Digital Media and Design at the University of Connecticut.

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.

Medical Humanities: The ‘Haunting’ Legacy at the Mansfield Training School

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The Medical Humanities and Arts Initiative. A Site of Conscience: The 'Haunting' Legacy of the Mansfield Training School (UConn's Depot Campus). Dr. Brenda Brueggemann (English, UConn), Jess Gallagher (M.A. in Human Rights Studies, Columbia University) and the Mansfield Training School undergraduate research group. The presentation will be followed by a light reception and feature a poster exhibit on “Disability Institutionalization in the U.S.” by students in AMST / ENGL 2274W, “Disability in American Literature and Culture.” April 17, 3:30pm, UCHI Conference Room, Homer Babbidge Library 4th floor.

A Site of Conscience: The ‘Haunting’ Legacy at the Mansfield Training School (UConn’s Depot Campus)

Dr. Brenda Brueggemann (English, American Studies, & WGSS, UConn)

Jess Gallagher (B.A, Honors English, UConn & M.A., Human Rights, Columbia University)

and the Mansfield Training School undergraduate research group: Madison Bigelow, English; Collin Lamontagne, Political Science; Ally LeMaster, English & Journalism; Paula Mock, Sociology & WGSS; Ashten Vassar, Human Rights, Psychology, American Studies

Wednesday April 17, 2024, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The presentation will be followed by a light reception and feature a poster exhibit on “Disability Institutionalization in the U.S.”

The event will also be livestreamed with ASL interpretation and CART.

Register to attend virtually

The Mansfield Training School Memorial and Museum project explores the 133-year history of the Mansfield Training School (MTS) while also focusing on its ties to the University of Connecticut (UConn). Located less than 4 miles from UConn’s main campus, the former MTS, now called the UConn Depot Campus,” spans 350 acres but has been neglected for 30 years, resulting in boarded-up buildings covered in graffiti and ivy, vandalism, and frequent trespassing violations. Based on two years of archival and collaborative work thus far, this restorative inquiry and justice initiative aims to excavate the institutionalization of disabled lives and to educate community members about MTS’s history while promoting community and institutional accountability. The project poses the central question: What are the obligations of institutions and communities to address the legacies of disability institutionalization through mutual restorative inquiry? This interactive program will: offer highlights from the MTS timeline; share a few of the traveling exhibit poster boards under construction; explore some of the MTS-UConn cross-institutional connections; and feature brief snapshots from the UConn student research team’s satellite projects growing out of their work on the MTS project overall.

Brenda Jo Brueggemann is the Project Director for the Mansfield Training School Memorial & Museum @ UConn. She is a Professor of English, American Studies, and Women’s, Gender, Sexuality Studies (WGSS) at the University of Connecticut where she also serves as the Aetna Endowed Chair of Writing.

Jess Gallagher is the Project Co-Director for the Mansfield Training School Memorial & Museum @ UConn. Jess received their BA (Honors, English) at the University of Connecticut and MA in Human Rights at Columbia University. Jess intends to work as a disability oral historian.

Madison Bigelow is a senior at the University of Connecticut studying English with a concentration in Creative Writing. Madison hopes to pursue a career in legal advocacy and public interest with a specific focus on disability rights.

Paula Mock is a senior at UConn studying both Sociology & Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Paula hopes to attend graduate school for a master’s degree in either social work or early childhood education.

Collin Lamontagne is a junior Political Science major at the University of Connecticut. His research interests center around politics, law, and policy.

Ally LeMaster is a senior English and journalism major at the University of Connecticut. Ally works as a legislative reporting intern at the Connecticut Mirror and is also currently editor-in-chief of Long River Review, UConn’s undergraduate-run literary magazine.

Ashten Vassar is a UConn senior majoring in Psychological Sciences and Human Rights with a minor in American Studies. Outside of the university, Ashten works with a grassroots coalition of institutional abuse survivors focusing on restoring agency through testimony and bringing public awareness.

Access note

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. The event will include ASL interpretation, both in person and for the livestream. The livestream will also include computer assisted real-time transcription.

Undergraduate Fellows Talk: Anabelle Bergstrom and Brent Freed

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Humanities Undergraduate Research Fellows. "The Self in a Hyperconnected World," Anabelle Bergstrom. “Vietnam in their Factories, Immigrant workers and the Global South during May 1968” Brent Freed. April 10, 1:00pm. Humanities Institute Conference Room, Homer Babbidge Library, 4th Floor.

Undergraduate Humanities Research Fellows

Anabelle Bergstrom, “Minds Among Minds: The Self in the Hyperconnected World”

and Brent Freed, “Vietnam in their Factories, Immigrant workers and the Global South during May 1968”

Wednesday April 10, 2024, 1:00pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend virtually

Undergraduate Humanities Research Fellows Anabelle Bergstrom and Brent Freed will present on their fellowship projects.

“Minds Among Minds: The Self in the Hyperconnected World,” Anabelle Bergstrom

“Minds Among Minds: The Self in the Hyperconnected World” seeks to examine how modern modes of connectivity such as social media affects identity and authenticity. By drawing on William James’ three constituents of the Self, the project makes bold claims about the impact the online world has on narratives of the Self. It also attempts to acknowledge and remedy the growing gap between the online and analog worlds.

“Vietnam in their Factories, Immigrant workers and the Global South during May 1968,” Brent Freed

This talk will examine Kadour Naïmi’s memoir Freedom in Solidarity: My Experience with the May 1968 Uprisings. Naïmi, the son of an Algerian immigrant, was a college student in Paris during the spring uprisings in 1968, and his connection to three different important groups of actors in the 1968 uprisings—students, workers, and immigrants—provides a unique window into what relations looked like between these groups. Naïmi’s memoir will be used to explain both the roles of immigrants during the spring riots as well as how anti-colonial ideas were discussed alongside the treatment of immigrants in France.

Anabelle S. Bergstrom is a junior majoring in political science and philosophy with a minor in public policy. Anabelle is a member of the Honors Program, Special Program in Law, BOLD Women’s Leadership Network, and is a Undergraduate Research Fellow for the UConn Humanities Institute. She also works for the Office of Undergraduate Research as a Peer Research Ambassador. After finishing her undergraduate degree, Anabelle plans to attend law school and pursue a career as a legal professional.

Brent Freed is a junior pursuing a double major in History and Statistics. A native of Connecticut, he grew up just 20 minutes away from UConn’s Storrs campus. His main areas of studies include 1960s counter-culture movements and student protests.

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.

Ampe: Leap into the Sky, Black Girl—A Film Screening

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AMPE: Leap into the Sky Black Girl, a film screening. April 9, 7:00pm Konover Auditorium. Q&A with the directors following hte screening. Cosponsored by Africana Studies, UConn Humanities Institute, and UConn Global.

Ampe: Leap into the Sky, Black Girl

A film screening and Q&A

Wednesday April 9, 2024, 7:00pm, Konover Auditorium

Don’t miss the screening of the short documentary film Ampe: Leap into the Sky Black Girl. Following the film, there will be a Q&A with the film’s directors, Ife Oluwamuyide and Claudia Owusu.

This event is cosponsored by the Africana Studies Institute and the Humanities Institute.

Watch the trailer.

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.

Antoinette Brim-Bell and the Ethnic Studies Symposium

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Connecticut Ethnic Studies Symposium. "Archival Activism and Public Memory." Keynote Speaker Antoinette Brim-Bell, Connecticut Poet Laureate. UConn Storrs Wilbur Cross, North Reading Room. Friday April 5, 2024. Keynote speech and lunch, 11:30am–12:30pm.

Connecticut Ethnic Studies Symposium

Friday April 5, 2024, 11:00am–6:00pm, Wilbur Cross North Reading Room

Keynote address by Antoinette Brim-Bell, Connecticut Poet Laureate, 11:30am

Register to attend the keynote. Lunch will be served.

Undergraduate students from across Connecticut will present their work at the 5th Annual Connecticut Ethnic Studies Symposium, on Friday, April 5th from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM. This in-person symposium is sponsored by the UConn Co-op Legacy Fellowship program and the UConn Humanities Institute.

The keynote speaker will be Antoinette Brim-Bell, the Connecticut State Poet Laureate. Brim-Bell was selected and her address is sponsored by the UConn Humanities Institute’s Undergraduate Advisory Council. The keynote address will take place at 11:30am, following lunch at 11:00am. Those wishing to attend the keynote must register.

This year’s symposium will mark the 50th anniversary of the 1974 sit-in at Wilbur Cross Library in which state police arrested 219 Black students who demanded the construction of an African American Cultural Center. These students’ radical protests for Black liberation created permanent, physical spaces for students of color to gather and inspired cross-racial solidarity. With a theme of “Archival Activism and Public Memory,” the symposium will educate the community about using archives to reconstruct the public memory and honor student leadership in social movements.

For more details, see the CT Ethnic Studies Symposium website.

A schedule of panels and speakers is available here.

Antoinette Brim-Bell, Connecticut’s 8th State Poet Laureate, is the author of three full-length poetry collections: These Women You Gave Me, Icarus in Love, and Psalm of the Sunflower. She is a Cave Canem Foundation Fellow and an alumna of Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA). Her poetry has appeared in various journals, magazines, textbooks, and anthologies. Additionally, Brim-Bell has published critical work, most notably, essays. A printmaker and collage artist, Brim-Bell exhibited both poetry and monoprints in Jazz: An exhibition of Poetry, Prints, and Photography at the Sumner McKnight Crosby Jr. Gallery in New Haven, CT, and Sheroes, in partnership with the Alliance of Women Veterans at the Grove in New Haven, CT. She serves as Secretary of the Board of Directors of Indolent Arts Foundation based in New York City, is a past Board Member of OneWorld Progressive Institute, and a past President of the Board of Directors of the Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven, CT. Additionally, Brim-Bell hosted a series of Black History Month television programs for the OneWorld Progressive Institute. She is also a former guest host of Patrick Oliver’s Literary Nation Talk Radio (KABF 88.3, Little Rock), for which she interviewed a variety of entertainers, literary figures, political pundits, and community developers. A sought-after speaker, editor, educator, and consultant, Brim-Bell is a Professor of English at Capital Community College in Hartford, CT.

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.

Undergraduate Fellows Talk: Breanna Bonner and Nathan Howard

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Undergraduate Humanities Research Fellows. Breanna Bonner, “The Space Between Black and Liberation: A Digital Exploration of Intersectional Invisibility" and Nathan Howard, "Homofascism: The Queering of Hate." April 3, 2:30pm. Humanities Institute Conference Room, Homer Babbidge Library, 4th floor.

Undergraduate Humanities Research Fellows

Breanna Bonner, “The Space Between Black and Liberation: A Digital Exploration of Intersectional Invisibility”

and Nathan Howard, “Homofascism: The Queering of Hate”

Wednesday April 3, 2024, 2:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend virtually

Undergraduate Humanities Research Fellows Breanna Bonner and Nathan Howard will present on their fellowship projects.

“The Space Between Black and Liberation: A Digital Exploration of Intersectional Invisibility,” Breanna Bonner

“The Space Between Black and Liberation,” aims to conceptualize Black Women’s experiences of Intersectional Invisibility in Social Movements. While Black Women hold two or more marginalized identities and are hyper-visible in the violence that necessitates the creation of social movements (e.g sexual assault, police violence, racial or gender-based discrimination), they are often invisible within the goals and outcomes of social movement advocacy. This research project aims to understand and combat intersectional invisibility through the creation of an educational, interactive website. Considering the guiding question: “how do we physically make invisibility visible,validated, and move towards solutions? ”The website explores historical contexts and interventions in Intersectional Invisibility, amplifies ethnographic research of Black Women students on campus, and creates a crucial guiding framework for future journalists, social movement advocates, and policy-makers.

“Homofascism: The Queering of Hate,” Nathan Howard

Violent homophobia is a core component of white supremacist fascist ideologies, such as white separatist movements and neo-Nazism. How, then, do we make sense of the historical and contemporaneous incidence of gay fascist activism? How do gay fascists make sense of, or even reconcile, their gay identity with the heterosexist expectations endemic to fascist projects? Why would they endorse the abuse of persons like them, or agitate for projects that seek to oppress them? “Homofascism: The Queering of Hate,” is an attempt to answer such questions, highlighting the primacy of gender in fascist and homofascist discourse.

Breanna Bonner, sophomore at the University of Connecticut (UCONN) double-majoring in Human Rights and Political Science. Breanna is a former Student Strategist for Kansas City Defender, a mentor for the Human Rights Close to Home Program, Research Specialist for UConn’s First Year Programing office exploring institutional barriers for students accessing Higher Education , and an Undergraduate Research Fellow for the UConn Humanities Institute. In her free time she enjoys hiking, ice-skating, embroidery, hanging out with friends, and using Twitter.

Nathan Howard is a senior at UConn, majoring in Philosophy with a minor in Music. Nathan is an assistant editorial board member at the undergraduate philosophy journal Stance and an Undergraduate Fellow at the UConn Humanities Institute. His research interests include fascism and extremism, nihilism, feminist and queer theory, and social and political philosophy. In his spare time, he enjoys reading, making music, doomscrolling on social media, and watching bad movies.

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.