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A Forum Discussion – March 23, 2016. 2-4pm / Oak 408 / University of Connecticut

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Intercultural Literature Citizenship and Public Discourse.

 

With Stefan Hermes / Eleni Coundouriotis / Manuela Wagner / Anke Finger

What role, if any, does intercultural communication (in literature, applied linguistics, human rights, media studies) play in public discourse? The goal of this forum discussion is to bring intercultural communication research from various disciplines together to debate notions of diversity in public discourse. The four participants present their work and offer tools with which to (better) engage in dialogs on cultural, religious, and ethnic differences. How can we work with new models to address silent or complex issues? How can we encourage bystanders to participate in public discourse by drawing from a range of communicative tools and intercultural and human rights perspectives?
Sponsored by LCL, the PDP/UCHI and Global Affairs

February 19, 2016, STEVE PINCUS “The Heart of the Declaration: The Patriots’ Case for Energetic Government”

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Storrs Campus
Austin,  Stern Room 217

Steve Pincus will present a talk entitled:

“The Heart of the Declaration: The Patriots’ Case for Energetic Government”

Why did George Washington tell his troops that the Declaration of Independence was a call to defend the British constitution against the British army? To answer this puzzle requires coming to grips with Patriot political ideas as they developed in the British Atlantic world from the 1730s through the 1770s. By restoring British American Patriot discussions to their imperial context it becomes clear that the American Patriots were concerned that George III’s government had done too little rather than too much. In particular the Patriots complained that George III’s government had done too little to promote immigration, support commerce and tradition British North America away from a slave-based economy.

A book by Brendan Kane, Associate Director of the Humanities Institute and Associate Professor of History at the University of Connecticut, was included by Choice in its list of Outstanding Academic Titles for 2015.

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Every year in the January issue, in print and online, Choice publishes a list of Outstanding Academic Titles that were reviewed during the previous calendar year. This prestigious list reflects the best in scholarly titles reviewed by Choice and brings with it the extraordinary recognition of the academic library community.

“Elizabeth I and Ireland” edited by Brendan Kane, University of Connecticut and Valerie McGowan-Doyle, Kent State University, Ohio. Cambridge University Press 2014.

The last generation has seen a veritable revolution in scholarly work on Elizabeth I, on Ireland, and on the colonial aspects of the literary productions that typically served to link the two. It is now commonly accepted that Elizabeth was a much more active and activist figure than an older scholarship allowed. Gaelic elites are acknowledged to have had close interactions with the crown and continental powers; Ireland itself has been shown to have occupied a greater place in Tudor political calculations than previously thought. Literary masterpieces of the age are recognised for their imperial and colonial entanglements. Elizabeth I and Ireland is the first collection fully to connect these recent scholarly advances. Bringing together Irish and English historians, and literary scholars of both vernacular languages, this is the first sustained consideration of the roles played by Elizabeth and by the Irish in shaping relations between the realms.

‘The first sustained study of both Elizabeth I’s relationship to the conquest of Ireland and Irish views of Elizabeth I’.

‘Coordinates the study of early modern Irish- and English-language sources around a common theme for the first time’.

‘The multidisciplinary approach allows readers to experience some of the intellectual, social and linguistic richness of the period’.

 

February 4, 2016. Professor Susan Haack, “Credulity and Circumspection: Epistemological Character and the Ethics of Belief “

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“Credulity and Circumspection: Epistemological Character and the Ethics of Belief “.
Professor Susan Haack, Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences, Professor of Philosophy, and Professor of Law at the University of Miami

 

 
Sponsored by The Humanities Institute’s Public Discourse Project and the Department of Philosophy 

UCONN–NEWS RELEASE– Mellon Award Establishes Scholarly Communications Design Studio as Part of Digital Publishing Initiative

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NEWS RELEASE

Contact: Clarissa Ceglio clarissa.ceglio@uconn.edu

860-486-7179

Mellon Award Establishes Scholarly Communications Design Studio as Part of Digital Publishing Initiative

A grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will help to expand digital scholarship at the University of Connecticut with the establishment of a Scholarly Communications Design Studio. The award is part of the Mellon Foundation’s digital publishing initiative, a multi-pronged effort to support and accelerate the evolution of academic publishing in the Internet age.

The start-up funding of $99,000 will bring together a collaboration among the Digital Media & Design Department in the School of Fine Arts, the University Libraries, and the Humanities Institute that will make a systematic intervention into the ways scholarship is researched, authored, presented, and published in the digital age.

The Scholarly Communications Design Studio will draw insight from the design disciplines to create, implement, assess, and disseminate a sustainable, collaboration-first scholarly communications process suited to an evolving publishing landscape, according Tom Scheinfeldt, associate professor of digital media and design and director of digital humanities in the Digital Media Center, who will lead the effort to develop the new studio.

“All too often, collaborators are brought on board to implement scholarly projects, not imagine them,” says Scheinfeldt, who previously helped lead the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. “UConn’s new studio aims to change this by pushing collaboration on traditional as well as digital scholarship upstream in the research and publication workflow, to the very headwaters of inquiry, imagination, and project conception. This ‘collaboration first’ approach will bring scholars together with designers, developers, editors, and librarians to start new projects, not merely to finish them.”

Faculty and staff who will be involved in developing the studio include Clarissa Ceglio, research assistant in the Digital Media Center; Greg Colati, assistant university librarian for Archives, Special Collections and Digital Curation; Brendan Kane, associate professor of history and associate director of the UConn Humanities Institute; and Samantha Olschan, assistant professor-in-residence in the Department of Digital Media and Design.

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Scheinfeldt says “design thinking” models have been used in creative industries from Hollywood film-making to Madison Avenue advertising, to solve problems of complexity and scale similar to those faced by scholarly publishing.

“We believe that similar problems in academic publishing can be addressed by a design-oriented approach tailored to the needs of scholarly communication,” says Ceglio, the studio’s research coordinator and editorial faculty-member-in-residence. “During the planning period we propose to spend considerable time surveying the field of digital publishing at university presses, scholarly associations, and research libraries to help us better understand the varied terrain of digital publication efforts and capabilities.”

Following the survey of digital publishing, the planning group will develop a design process document outlining what will be needed to develop the Scholarly Communications Design Studio, establish an operational structure within Homer D. Babbidge Library and create a refined sustainability plan for the studio.

“The Scholarly Communications Design Studio is a strategic development for the University,” says Mun Choi, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. “Not only will the studio constitute an innovation in its own right, it will further UConn’s academic vision by promoting collaboration across disciplines and contributing to the communication of breakthrough ideas. With this award from the Mellon Foundation’s Scholarly Communications program, UConn will set the foundations for long-term contributions to the ways in which knowledge is communicated and shared in our digital age.”

ABOUT THE ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION Founded in 1969, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation endeavors to strengthen, promote, and, where necessary, defend the contributions of the humanities and the arts to human flourishing and to the well-being of diverse and democratic societies by supporting exemplary institutions of higher education and culture as they renew and provide access to an invaluable heritage of ambitious, path-breaking work.

ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT UConn is one of the top public research universities in the nation, with more than 30,000 students with more than 100 research centers and institutes that serve the university’s teaching, research, diversity and outreach missions. UConn has partnerships with 100 institutions worldwide and is one of only four U.S. members of the Universitas 21 network, the leading global network of research universities for the 21st century.

UConn Celebrates Humanities Authors

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The UConn Humanities Institute in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences will celebrate 72 books, written by 63 UConn scholars and fellows, in its biennial Celebration of Humanities Authors this week.

The books range in topics across the humanities and interdisciplinary studies, from the philosophical virtues of happiness to accounts of strangers in colonial Boston, fascism in modern American politics, how photos of black children advance social justice, the diaries of a Cold War diplomat, and why detective fiction is so popular.

“These books represent some of the best work by some of the best scholars in the world on their respective topics,” says Michael Lynch, professor of philosophy and director of the Humanities Institute. “And they illustrate the sheer range of scholarship going on at UConn, from work on Africana philosophy to a history of Native American whalers.”

The Humanities Institute’s mission is to enhance research and creativity in the humanities, broadly defined. By enabling UConn scholars and students to explore the full range of humanistic inquiry and methodologies, the Institute calls attention to the many ways that humanities scholarship enriches general understanding of the human condition.

“These books, the product of years of study and writing by faculty from a wide range of disciplines, are an impressive contribution to our understanding of our culture and society,” says Jeremy Teitelbaum, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. more

MLA AWARDS WILLIAM RILEY PARKER PRIZE FOR an ARTICLE IN PMLA TO UCHI Dissertation Fellow 2014-15 GORDON FRASER

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New York, NY – 1 December 2015– The Modern Language Association of America today announced the winner of its fifty-second annual William Riley Parker Prize for an outstanding article published in PMLA, the association’s journal of literary scholarship. The author of this year’s winning essay is Gordon Fraser, of the University of Connecticut, Storrs. His article “Troubling the Cold War Logic of Annihilation: Apocalyptic Temporalities in Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” appeared in the May 2015 issue of PMLA.

University of Connecticut Residential Faculty Fellowships in the Humanities 2016-17 Call for Applications

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The University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) invites outstanding university and college professors, independent scholars, writers, museum and library professionals to apply for a residential fellowship that comes with a stipend of $40,000.  Successful candidates will devote an academic year to research and writing, discussion and scholarly collaboration with other UCHI fellows at the Storrs campus of the University of Connecticut.  Application materials, including three letters of recommendation, must be received by January 15, 2016.
For complete information and guidelines, visit: https://humanities.uconn.edu/become-a-fellow/