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ARE YOU a UConn Humanities Author with a Recent Book Publication?

On December 9, 2015, CLAS Dean Jeremy Teitelbaum and the UConn Humanities Institute (UCHI) will host a celebration of Humanities Authors and Authors in the Related Social Sciences.  We will honor authors who have published books on or after October 31, 2013.  Books included in this celebration must be in print by October 31, 2015.  If you are a humanities author with a book published within this time frame, please contact Tiziana Matarazzo at the UCHI to share the book title, publisher’s name, a photo of you and a high resolution electronic image of the book cover.  The minimum size requirement of the image is 3.5 Mb.  Books may be monographs, scholarly editions, translations, edited collections, textbooks or creative projects.

Tiziana can be contacted by email at:  Tiziana.matarazzo@uconn.edu or by telephone at 486-9057.  The deadline for receipt of this information is Thursday, October 1, 2015.

Research Excellence Program (REP) for the 2015-2016 academic year

The Office of the Vice President for Research is pleased to announce the Research Excellence Program (REP) for the 2015-2016 academic year.

The primary goal of the Research Excellence Program (REP) is to provide seed funding to promote, support, and enhance the research, scholarship, and creative endeavors of faculty at UConn, including (but not limited to) the strategic and emerging areas delineated in the Academic Plan.  As an outcome of these awards, recipients are expected to submit proposals to extramural sponsors (federal, state, private, industry, or foundation sponsors) and/or carry out activities consistent with the highest standards of accomplishment in their discipline. The REP is designed to assist faculty, regardless of rank, in all areas of scholarly work and to facilitate the competitiveness of extramural funding opportunities as well as contribute to UConn’s national and international reputation as a premier research university.

Two broad categories of competitive awards are available. Proposals should be submitted to the category that best represents the project’s goals, methods of study, and expected outcomes rather than a specific discipline or area of study.

o    Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, and Social Sciences

  • Single PI awards capped at $25,000
  • Multi-PI awards capped at $50,000
  • Proposals should emphasize how the research will advance knowledge in the Sciences (basic and applied life science, physical sciences, mathematical science, social and behavioral sciences), Technology, Engineering, or Society (applied research, interdisciplinary research)

o    Fine Arts, Humanities, Business, Law, and Engagement

  • Single PI awards capped at $10,000
  • Multi-PI awards capped at $25,000
  • Proposals should emphasize how the research, project, or scholarship will advance the arts, humanities, business, law, education, creative endeavors, or engaged scholarship (community partnerships, evaluation research, participatory research)

Deadlines

o    Letter of Intent must be submitted by 11/20/2015

o    Full proposals must be submitted by 12/18/2015

o    Notification of awards will be made by 5/1/2016

 

Program requirements are available at http://research.uconn.edu.

For further information, contact: research@uconn.edu

2014-2015 Graduate Dissertation Fellow Christina Henderson was appointed a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of American Literature

We are pleased to announce that our 2014-2015 Graduate Dissertation Fellow Christina Henderson was appointed a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of American Literature in the English and Foreign Languages Department at Georgia Regents University in Augusta, Georgia.
Congratulations!!

The Inaugural Caribbean Philosophical Association Summer School at UCONN presents and invites you to join us for . . .

Three Public Lectures

 

6/1: 9:30 a.m., Class of 1947 Room “What the Jaguar Saw: Why Only Amerindians Can Save our Modern Soul,”

by Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Birkbeck College, University of London

6/2: 2p.m., Oak Hall 408 “The Roots of Africana Political Philosophy,” by Paget Henry, Brown University

6/4: 2p.m., Class of 1947 Room “The Vertical Revolution and Political Spirituality,” by Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers University

Questions? Email jane.gordon@uconn.edu

The Public Discourse Project is the recipient of a $1 million grant (UConn’s Humanities Institute in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences)

UConn Invests $10 Million in Support of Academic Vision

A new institute for brain and cognitive science and a humanities project exploring the barriers to meaningful public discourse are just two of the faculty-led initiatives the University of Connecticut is supporting through the allocation of nearly $10 million in grants.The three-year grants represent the first set of targeted school investments directly related to UConn’s new Academic Vision, which pursues excellence in five fundamental areas: undergraduate education, graduate study, teaching, engagement, and research.

The Public Discourse Project, also the recipient of a $1 million grant, will be overseen by UConn’s Humanities Institute in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Through the project, UConn faculty in the arts and humanities will explore ways to achieve meaningful public discourse in an increasingly divisive culture. Those involved with the project will look at the historical and sociological barriers that stymie productive social dialogue and, alternatively, the conditions that foster it. With anticipated additional funding from the John Templeton Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the project is designed to establish UConn as an international leader in public and digital humanities research.

“The project aims not only to understand the sources of our cultural division, but to do something about it: to combine academic research and community engagement toward the goal of raising the level of discussion in the hope of strengthening democracy,” says philosophy professor Michael Lynch, director of the Humanities Institute.

read more

 

Lessons in Resistance: Richard Wright as Social Critic and Political Thinker

 

MONDAY, MAY 11th

LOCATION: KATHARINE SEYMOUR DAY HOUSE

 

1:00 P.M. Meeting Opening: ENGAGING RICHARD WRIGHT AS A POLITICAL THINKER,

Ernie Zirakzadeh, Political Science, UCONN and Jane Gordon, Political Science & Africana Studies, UCONN

 

1:30 P.M. Panel I: BLACK SUBJECTIVITY

James Haile, Philosophy, Dickinson College,

111A Cryptic Tongue’: Richard Wright’s Phenomenological Sociology”

Lewis Gordon, Philosophy & Africana Studies, UCONN

“Richard Wright’s Black Consciousness, Steve Biko’s Politics”

 

 

3:15P.M. Panel II: RADICAL POLITICS

George Ciccariello-Maher, Politics and History, Drexel University,“Bigger’s Being, Wright’s Lumpen”

Marilyn Nissim-Sabat, Philosophy, Lewis University,

“Conceiving a New Politics: Richard Wright, Simone de Beauvoir, and the Future of Critical Theory”

Dorothy Stringer, English,Temple University,

“Psychology and Black Liberation in Richard Wright’s Black Power (1954)”

 

 

TUESDAY, MAY 12th

LOCATION: MARK TWAIN CENTER

9:30 A.M. Panel Ill: ENGENDERED VIOLENCE

Floyd Hayes, Political Science & Africana Studies,Johns Hopkins University, “Womanizing Richard Wright: Constructing the Black Feminine in The Outsider” Tommy Curry, Philosophy and Africana Studies,Texas A&M University,

“Man of Work:The Rape and Execution of Willie McGee”

 

 

11:00 A.M. Panel IV: RHETORICAL REGISTERS

William Dow,Comparative Literature & English, American University of Paris,

“Richard Wright’s Literary Journalism: Reprimanding Race, Resisting Modernism”

Ernie Zirakzadeh, Political Science, UCONN,

“Modernist Culture and American Fascism: Bigger as Harbinger of White Politics”

Stephen Marshall, American Studies & African and African Diaspora Studies, University of Texas, Austin,

“The Prophetic Wright”

 

 

2:15 P.M. Panel V: UNCLE TOM’S GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN

Jane Gordon, Political Science & Africana Studies, UCONN,“Slavery, Continued: Uncle Tom’s Grandchildren”

Laura Grattan, Political Science,Wellesley College,

“The Refusal to Compromise with Reality: Wright and Prison Abolitionism”

 

Generously sponsorsed by the UCONN HUMANITIES INSTITUTE Questions? email jane.gordon@uconn.edu

UCHI/OUR Undergraduate Awards 2014-2015

Eric Medawar ’15 (CLAS)

Travel Award for Revisiting Iconoclasm: Image and Power in Byzantium and Early Islamic Syria

Eric’s project interrogates the origins of Byzantine iconoclasm and Islamic aniconism, and what, if any, relation exists between these phenomena. Through travel to Jordan, Eric will study the décor of the mosque at Qasr al-Hallabat, a site that has attracted little prior scholarly attention. Documentation and study of this site will provide further evidence as to whether the use of figurative representation in Islamic religious spaces was deliberately avoided only after the reign of the Marwanids and will represent an original contribution to the field of Islamic art and architectural history.

 

Jessica Gaafar ’15 (CLAS)

Supply Award for Language Specific Tuning of Audiovisual Integration in Early Development

As infants mature and gain experience, their perceptual system tunes to the most relevant features around them, such as the sounds of their native language. Jessica’s project aims to test the hypothesis that the visual component of speech can influence infants’ perception of the auditory component, thereby reopening sensitivity to unfamiliar perceptual experiences. By exposing infants to longer and richer speech in an unfamiliar language, she will see whether perceptual narrowing can be delayed.

 

Tara Pealer ’15 (CLAS)

Travel Award for The Love Triangle: How Twilight, The Hunger Games and Divergent Defy and Affirm the Power of Romance and Sex When Defining Female Characters

Tara will be presenting a paper at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association’s annual conference in April in New Orleans, LA. Tara’s paper draws on Judith Butler and Eve Sedgewick’s theorizations of erotic triangles to consider how the female protagonists in three young adult fiction series are implicated in love triangles that diverge from standard formulations. Tara traces a shift from passive to active feminine power chronologically from Twilight to Divergent.

 

Abdullah Hasan ’16 (CLAS)

Supply Award for Muslim Masculinities: A Methodological Study of the Qur’an and Hadith.

Abdullah’s project aims to understand Qur’anic definitions of masculinity and men’s roles in society. This fall, Abdullah studied two popular translations of the Qur’an, tafsir of the Qur’an (for information about historical interpretations), Hadith compilations (for historical contexts of particular verses), and a series of theoretical works in masculinity studies. Abdullah was selected as a 2015 University Scholar for an expansion of this project, Muslim Masculinities in American Discourse, that will consider how post-9/11 rhetoric characterizes religious prescriptions of masculinity.

 

Alexandria Bottelsen ’16 (ED, CLAS) & Luke LaRosa Dec ’15 (CLAS)

Travel Award for After the Branding: Student Created Perceptions of the University Writing Center

Alexandria and Luke presented a paper at the Northeast Writing Center Association’s annual conference in April in Hackettstown, NJ. Their project examines the place branding of the UConn Writing Center by surveying students in order to understand their perceptions of the center now that it no longer actively brands itself. As writing center tutors, they sought to determine whether the place identity that was sought a decade ago (a welcoming space for all students) is currently the reality of how the space is perceived and to identify demographics or information sources that may need to change to better adhere to that desired identity.

 

Sarah Carew ’18 (CLAS), Brandon Marquis ’17 (CLAS), Chantel Martin ’15 (CLAS), Jessica Zaccagnini ‘16 (CLAS)

Travel Award for The Androgynous Center: Tutoring Across the Masculine/Feminine Spectrum

Sarah Carew ’18 (CLAS), Chantel Martin ’15 (CLAS), Jessica Zaccagnini ‘16 (CLAS) Brandon Marquis ’17 (CLAS)

Sarah, Brandon, Chantel, and Jessica conducted a panel discussion and interactive workshop at the Northeast Writing Center Association’s annual conference in April in Hackettstown, NJ. Their conference session posed the question of whether or not writing centers may productively position themselves as androgynous entities in sexist campus environments. They employed Talcott Parsons’ and Robert Frees Bales’ work in social psychology to explore the ways in which writing centers may benefit from an awareness of the range of masculine traits and feminine traits as these traits are expressed in directive and non-directive tutoring.

 

Victoria Sylvestre ’17 (NUR)

Travel Award for Type 1 Diabetes: The Liminal Space Between Ability and Disability

Victoria will be presenting a paper at the Society for Disability Studies annual conference in June in Atlanta, GA. Victoria’s analysis of personal blogs leads her to posit that people with type 1 diabetes transcend the current bifurcations of “ability” and “disability” due to fluctuating blood glucose values. Her research places type 1 diabetes within a disability framework and addresses ruptures in the medical and social definitions of this condition.

 

Brighid DeAngelis ’17 (Theater Design & Technology), advised by Adrienne Macki Braconi (Dramatic Arts)

SHARE Award for Dramaturgies of memory, materiality, and violence in African American theatre

Brighid’s SHARE project integrated her interests in theater and history. She conducted dramaturgical research in order to help the cast and audience of Reginald Edmund’s play, “Daughters of the Moon,” to better understand the historical and religious context of West Africa in the early 19th century, where the play begins. She also assisted in the compilation of the literature review for Professor Macki Braconi’s forthcoming second book, Enacted Violence: Materiality, Cultural Memory, and African American Performance.

 

Matthew Henderson ’18 (Linguistics and Anthropology), advised by Harry van der Hulst (Linguistics)

SHARE Award for The linguistic analysis of graphic novels

Matthew’s SHARE project explored the structure underlying sequential graphics, as found in comics, graphic novels, and other types of texts. Together with Professor van der Hulst, he analyzed a range of written and drawn works to develop an inventory of formal elements in sequential drawing and to characterize the range of form elements from non-iconic through iconic. By applying the methods of linguistic analysis and cognitive science to sequential graphics, this team considered how iconicity functions in graphic communication and contributed to the interdisciplinary study of sequential graphics.

The University of Connecticut Humanities Institute is pleased to announce its Fellowship Awards for 2015-16:

External Faculty Fellowships

Peter Constantine         “Translation and annotation of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s autobiography Between the Millstones”                              

Joshua Schechter           “Reasoning and Rationality:  The Epistemology of our Most Basic Patterns of Inference”

UConn Faculty Fellowships  

César Abadía-Barrero “Health Ruins: From Post-Colonial to Post Neoliberal ‘Medical Care’ in Columbia”

Susan Einbinder          “Eleh Ezkerah:  Trauma and Medieval Jewish Literature”

Hassanaly Ladha           “The Idea of Africa: Hegel, Architecture, and the Political Subject”

Diane Lillo-Martin       “Sign Language Acquisition:  Archiving and Sharing”

Natalie Munro              “A 30,000 year history of human foraging and farming in the Aegean:  the view from Franchthi Cave, Greece”

Brad Simpson              “The First Right: Self Determination and the Transformation of International Politics”

Peter Zarrow                “The Utopian Impulse in Modern Chinese Political Thought, 1890-1940”           

Dissertation Fellowships

Joanna A. MacGugan    “Competing authorities and contested spaces:  Dying in Dublin in the reign of Edward I”

Christiana Salah             “The Popular Invention of the Victorian Governess, 1815-2015”

Draper Dissertation Fellowships

Hilary Bogert-Winkler   “Prayerful Protest and Clandestine Conformity:  Alternative Liturgies and the  Book of Common Prayer in Interregnum England”

Allison B. Horrocks         “The Family and the Home as the Nursery of Humanity”:  Flemmie Kittrell and the International Politics of Home Economics