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How to Publicize Your Research

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Faculty Success Initiative. How to Publicize Your Research. March 11, 12:15pm, UCHI Conference Room, HBL 4th Floor.

How to Publicize Your Research

An information session for humanities and social science faculty

Wednesday, March 11, 2026, 12:15pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

Tom Breen, Kim Phillips, and Emily Zangari from UConn Communications will lead a workshop on best practices for publicizing your work as a scholar, including building an online presence, responding to press inquiries, and dealing with negative media attention.

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. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible.

Jesper Sørensen on Ritual as Cultural Immune Activity

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Co-sponsored by the Anthropology Department and the James Barnett Endowment. "Rites of disruption and technologies of the self: an investigation of ritual as cultural immune reactivity," Jesper Sorensen, Department of Religion, Aarhus University. March 3, 3:30pm, UCHI Conference Room.

Rites of Disruption and Technologies of the Self: An Investigation of Ritual as Cultural Immune Reactivity

Jesper Sørensen (Professor, Department of the Study of Religion, Aarhus University)

Tuesday, March 3, 2026, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

Virtual Register to attend

It is an old insight that ritual behavior plays a central role in the formation and maintenance of social groups. Whether we attempt to ‘shake’ together a group of new students, or commemorate a special occasion in the history of an existing social formation, ritual is one of the prime cultural technologies employed. The questions are, why ritualized behavior is an effective mean of aligning members of social groups, and whether ritual performance can tell us something about basic social formations and their internal relation. In this talk, I will address these questions through a framework of cultural immune systems. Similar to the role of immune regulation in biological organisms of various sizes and complexities, social groups are regulated by cultural immune systems seeking to preserve the integrity of a social sphere. Following a short introduction to a predictive processing account of human cognition, I will focus on how ritual facilitates the formation of cognitive alignment between individuals and hence the gradual formation of cultural models able to ease coordination and coordination within groups. Ritual is seen as the primary method to disrupt nepotistic loyalties directed towards the kin-group in favor of loyalty towards the community at large. I will then focus on how, in modernity, this social function of ritual has gradually transformed into a technology supporting the formation, preservation and optimization of ‘an autonomous self’ that emerges in reaction to the disarticulation of social roles in modern (post-)industrial society.

Jesper Sørensen is Associate Professor in Comparative Religion at Aarhus University, Denmark. His research focuses on magic, ritual, and cognitive and evolutionary aspects of religion. He has recently published a monograph, Why Cultures Persist: Toward a Cultural Immunology, investigating how culture contributes to the stabilization of various social aggregates.

This talk was organized by Richard Sosis (Anthropology, UConn) and is presented as part of the Humanities Institute’s current theme: Connections & Disconnections. It is co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology and the James Barnett Endowment.

Access note

If you require accommodations 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. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible

Ireland and the Making of America

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Presented by: UCHI, Irish Studies, and WGSS. "Ireland and the Making of America." 9:30am–4:30pm, UCHI Conference Room, HBL 4th floor, Storrs, CT. With the support of the Clinton Institute, University College Dublin.

UCHI, Irish Studies, and WGSS Present:

Ireland and the Making of America

Thursday, February 26, 2026, 9:30am–4:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

With the support of the Clinton Institute at University College Dublin and as part of a cross-Atlantic series to mark America’s 250th anniversary, UCHI, Irish Studies, and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies will host an event under the project’s umbrella title of “Ireland and the Making of America.”

Participants will critically examine how Irish peoples took a stake in the American national story and their impact on its politics and cultures, from the eighteenth-century Scots-Irish to the poor who fled Ireland’s 1845 famine, and on to the impact of those with Irish ties on America and Ireland into our century.

An American 250 | CT Community Event

Schedule

9:30–10:00am, Gathering & breakfast

Anna Mae Duane, Director, UCHI and Mary Burke, Professor of English, UConn
Welcome and Opening Remarks

10:00-11:00am, Panel 1: Early Irish America

Mary Burke, Professor of English, UConn
“Four Centuries of Irish America”

Wayne Franklin, Professor of English and American Studies, UConn
“Sir William Johnson and the Mixed Landscape of Colonial New York”

11:15am-12:15pm, Panel 2: Performing Irish America

Chris Dowd, Professor of English & Game Design, University of New Haven
“The Irish in American Popular Culture, 1850s-1930s”

Sarah Churchill, Art & Irish studies lecturer; Canadian Centre for Architecture 2026 Fellow
“Butching Up: Dance, Dress, and Gender in Contemporary Irish Dance”

12:15-1:15pm, Lunch

1:15-2:15pm, Panel 3: Irish Dance in America: History & Practice

Rebecca McGowan, Irish dance scholar & practitioner
“Community & Identity in Irish dancing”

Irish dance group workshop for all led by Rebecca McGowan

2:30-3:30pm, Panel 4: The Irish Americans

Grégory Pierrot, Associate Professor of English, UConn
“Marcus Rainsford: Between Ireland and Haiti”

Abby Bender, Director of the Center for Irish Studies, Sacred Heart U
“The Saint Patrick’s Battalion and Irish-Mexican Solidarity”

3:45-4:15pm, Panel 5: Irish Dance in America: History & Practice

Ted Smyth, former Irish diplomat; President, Advisory Board, Glucksman Ireland House, NYU; Chair, Advisory Board, Clinton Institute for American Studies, UCD
“Bringing Peace to Northern Ireland: The Critical Role of Irish America and Successive US Presidents”

4:15pm, Closing Remarks

Ted Smyth

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. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible

Fellow’s Talk: Julia Smachylo on Environmental Incentives

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2025-26 UCHI Fellow's Talk. "Silvic Stewardship: Incentivizing Environmental Care." Julia Smachylo, Assistant Professor. Landscape Architecture, UConn, with a response by Jennifer Cazenave. February 25, 3:30pm, UCHI Conference Room.

Silvic Stewardship: Incentivizing Environmental Care

Julia Smachylo (Assistant Professor, Landscape Architecture, UConn)

with a response by Jennifer Cazenave (French and Cinema & Media Studies, Boston University)

Virtual, with automated captioning.

Register to attend

This talk examines how environmental incentive programs, with a focus on those shaping private land management in forested landscapes, function as powerful spatial and political tools. By reframing these programs under the framework of incentivized landscapes, the presentation highlights how legal and fiscal policies actively produce socio‑ecological space, shaping both environmental outcomes and design possibilities. I explore how these landscapes operate as state spatial strategies, how they influence patterns and processes across ecosystems, and why their design consequences matter for planning in the Anthropocene. The talk introduces a conceptual framework for understanding incentivized landscapes as hybrid socio-political and socio-ecological systems, and discusses emerging perspectives that reveal new directions for landscape planning and design practice in this context.

Dr. Smachylo’s research and practice are situated at the intersection of critical urban theory, political ecology and landscape design, and focus on making visible largely unseen processes that shape both our interactions with, and physical form of, our environment. Working across disciplines, her research connects landscapes with multi-scalar processes of environmental stewardship, with the goal of contributing to ongoing efforts to develop more holistic and socially responsible approaches to design intervention.

Jennifer Cazenave is an Associate Professor of French and Cinema & Media Studies at Boston University. Her first book, An Archive of the Catastrophe: The Unused Footage of Claude Lanzmann’s ‘Shoah’ (SUNY Press, 2019), offers a chronicle of overlooked aspects of the film’s making, while also framing broader questions about trauma and mediation, audiovisual testimonies, gendered memories, and digital archives. An Archive of the Catastrophe received an Honorable Mention for the 2020 Best First Book Award presented by the Society for Cinema & Media Studies. A French translation is forthcoming in 2026.

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. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible.

Faculty Talk: Sandy Grande on Critical Place Theory

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2025-26 UCHI Faculty Talk. "Critical Place Theory" Sandy Grande, Professor of Political Science and Native American and Indigenous Studies. February 11, 12:15pm, UCHI Conference Room, HBL 4th floor.

Critical Place Theory

Sandy Grande (Professor, Political Science & Social and Critical Inquiry, UConn)

Wednesday, February 18, 2026, 12:15pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend virtually

In this presentation, Sandy Grande will explore the epistemic impasses that often emerge between Indigenous and non-Indigenous theories of governance and (human) life. The paper particularly focuses on how the praxis of being of/on land—to be of place—gives rise to different theories and conceptions of governance and power and, therefore, knowledge and liberation.

Sandy Grande is a Professor of Political Science and Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of Connecticut. Across her work, she aims to produce more nuanced analyses of the colonial present. Her work has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and more recently by the UConn Humanities Institute and the Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy, for her new project on Indigenous Elders and aging. She has also published numerous book chapters and articles and her book, Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought was published in a 10th anniversary edition, and a Portuguese translation is anticipated to be published in Brazil in 2025. In addition to publishing numerous articles and book chapters, she is a founding member of New York Stands for Standing Rock. As one of their projects, they published the Standing Rock Syllabus. In addition to her academic and organizing work, she is most proud of providing eldercare for her parents up until and through their passage elsewhere.

Access note

If you require accommodations 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. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible

Fellow’s Talk: Harry van der Hulst on Sign Languages

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2025–26 UCHI Fellow's Talk. “How the recent emergence of new sign languages can shed light on how human languages came about in the far past,” Harry van der Hulst, Professor of Linguistics. With a response by Ashmita Mukherjee. February 18, 3:30pm.

How the recent emergence of new sign languages can shed light on how human languages came about in the far past

Harry van der Hulst (Professor, Linguistics, UConn)

with a response by Ashmita Mukherjee (Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, UConn)

Wednesday, February 18, 2026, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend

In this talk Harry van der Hulst will first discuss the goal of his current project which is to write a book that explains why we say that sign languages are real and full-fledged human languages. His current focus is on one chapter in this book which deals with evolutionary questions concerning the origin of human language, both spoken and signed. While the origin of human language is hidden in the prehistoric past, which means that direct evidence for its emergence is in principle not available, for some time researchers from many different disciplines have shown that there is potential ‘circumstantial’ evidence based on the study of attested languages (their grammars and use), their documented history, archeology, ethology (the study of animal behavior), stages in child language acquisition, among others, that can serve as ‘windows’ on early (and undocumented) stages of human language. In this endeavor, sign languages that have recently come into existence provide a particularly interesting window given that various stages in their development have been documented by sign linguists.

Harry van der Hulst (PhD 1984, Leiden University, Netherlands) specializes in phonology (of spoken and signed languages). He has published 5 books, over 180 articles, (co-)edited 32 books and 6 journal theme issues, among them The Oxford Handbook of Vowel Harmony (with Nancy Ritter) in 2024. He is Editor-in-Chief of The Linguistic Review. He is professor of linguistics at the University of Connecticut.

Ashmita Mukherjee is a doctoral researcher in Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut. Her dissertation, “Textual Pleasures: Amusement and Affect in Post/Colonial India (1850-1950),” examines the role of literary amusement as a tool for anti-colonial resistance. She is interested in global 19th-20th century, theories of emotion and affect, South Asian Studies, world literature and culture, public humanities, and digital media. She has published articles in Literature/Film Quarterly and South Asian Review, and is a creator and co-host at the YouTube channel @theantilibrarypodcast.

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. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible.

Humanities Involvement Fair

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Humanities Involvement Fair. February 11, 12:30-4:30pm. Student Union 311.

Humanities Involvement Fair

Wednesday, February 11, 2026, 12:30–4:30pm, Student Union 331

Want to learn more about humanities, social science, and arts related activities at UConn? Drop in to the Humanities Involvement Fair. Representatives from clubs, groups, and units across campus will share information about their programs, opportunities, and more.

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. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible

Fellow’s Talk: Fiona Somerset on Indigeneity and Consent

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2025-26 UCHI Fellow's Talk. "Land and People: Indigeneity and Consent in Lawman's Brut" Fiona Somerset, Professor of Comparative Literature and Social and Critical Inquiry, with a response by April Anson. February 4, 3:30pm, UCHI Conference Room.

Land and People: Indigeneity and Consent in Lawman’s Brut

Fiona Somerset (Professor, LCL & Social and Critical Inquiry, UConn)

with a response by April Anson (English & Social and Critical Inquiry, UConn)

Wednesday, February 4, 2026, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend

Far-right nationalists have appropriated the concept of indigeneity in recent years to create isolationist arguments (one land, one language, one people). Recently, historians have worked to counter these claims by suggesting that until the Enlightenment, people in Europe did not have a concept of indigeneity, because they did not have a concept of popular consent. The book I am writing on the history of consent demonstrates otherwise: in this talk I will show how the early thirteenth century English writer Lawman in his historical poem the Brut develops a theory of indigeneity based on popular consent. However, Lawman’s understanding of indigeneity tends to delegitimize far-right nationalist arguments, rather than supporting them.

Fiona Somerset is Professor of Comparative Literature and Culture and of Social and Critical Inquiry at the University of Connecticut, where she has served as Codirector of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies and Interim Director of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is finishing work on a book on the medieval history of consent through silence, and preparing to write another book on personhood in the Middle Ages.

April Anson is an assistant professor of English and Social and Critical Inquiry at the University of Connecticut where she serves on the executive committees for American Studies and Native American and Indigenous Studies. Prior to joining UConn, Dr. Anson was assistant professor of Public Humanities at San Diego State University and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Anson works at the intersection of environmental humanities, Indigenous American studies, and political theory.

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. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible.

Will AI Replace Us?

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Will AI Replace US? A Panel on AI and the Future of Work. February 4, 12:30-1:30pm, Konover Auditorium. Panelists: Ted Laskaris, Interim Chief Information Officer, UConn James Maroney, CT State Senator Sachin S. Pandya, Roger Sherman Professor of Law, UConn

Will AI Replace Us?

A Panel on AI and the Future of Work

Wednesday, February 4, 2026, 12:30–1:30pm, Konover Auditorium
The event will also be livestreamed.

It’s a question shared by students, staff and faculty: How will Artificial Intelligence shape our workplaces?

Join us for a conversation with experts who are shaping AI policy, practice, and regulation: Ted Laskaris, Interim Chief Information Officer, UConn; CT State Senator James Maroney; and Sachin S. Pandya, Roger Sherman Professor of Law, UConn. Our panelists will share their expertise and field questions from UConn staff, faculty, and students to explore practical questions about workplace transformation, protection, and possibility in the age of AI.

Together, we’ll consider how we can move beyond speculation to understand what AI actually means for the work we do—and the relationships that make that work meaningful.

Please join us—all are welcome! If your class schedule aligns with this event, please feel free to bring your class! Just send a quick email to let us know how many students to expect to uchi@uconn.edu.

This is event is co-sponsored by UCPEA.

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. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible

Undergraduate Research Fellowship Information Session

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Undergraduate Research Fellowship Information Session. January 29, 4:00pm. Virtual.

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.

Undergraduate Research Fellowship Information Session

January 29, 2026, 4:00pm
Live • Online • Registration required

Register

Interested in applying for a humanities undergraduate research fellowship but don’t know where to start?

We are holding an information session for prospective applicants for the 2026–27 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.