20 Years of UCHI

20 Years of Fellows: Joseph McAlhany

Posted on November 30, 2021December 13, 2021 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

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.

2014–15 Visiting Fellow Joseph McAlhany holds a B.A. in philosophy from Haverford College and a Ph.D. in Classics from Columbia University. He has taught at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, at the University of New Mexico, and in Hirosaki, Japan. In 2013, he was a participant in an NEH Summer Insititute, “The Centrality of the Translation to the Humanities,” and in 2015 joined another NEH Summer Institute in Italy on the Etrsucans and early Romans. He is now Assistant Professor of History at UConn.

What was your fellowship project about? Would you give us an update on the project?

My primary project was an edition and translation of the collected fragments of Marcus Terentius Varro for the Loeb Classical library, the last (incomplete) version of which dates from the 18th century—there are about 2000 fragments in total, in both Latin and Greek, found scatted throughout texts ranging over more than a thousand years. The project, far more complicated than I imagined, is thankfully nearing completion. However, thanks to my work on this project, I published articles and chapters on Latin textual criticism, the idea of literary history in ancient Rome, and the relationship between translation and the humanities. Moreover, a Latin reading group that began during my fellowship with former fellow Hilary Bogert-Winkler and former Associate Director Brendan Kane not only continues to this day, but led this year to a Mellon-NEH proposal to produce a digital edition and translation—we’ll know the results in December!

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

The opportunity to present nascent ideas to a warm, encouraging, and diverse group of intellects was a true gift—their feedback opened up alternative paths of thought which would otherwise have remained hidden.

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

I always enjoyed when other fellows or UCHI staff would stop by my office to ask a question, and, in particular, when Michael Lynch appeared at the door, I knew an invigorating conversation was soon to follow!

What are you working on now (or next)?

My new project, which also builds upon my time as a fellow, traces the history of translation not as a practice but as a concept—the way the idea of translation itself has been “translated” at different moments and the consequences of this for the development of humanism. The project covers the Roman translation of Greek literature, the Christian and Jewish debates about the translation of the Hebrew scriptures, medieval ideas about the translation of empires and saints’ relics, Renaissance pseudo-translations, and last but not least, a critique of contemporary translation studies.

There are two crucial questions for the future of knowledge: what is it? and what is its value? There have always been different forms of knowing, valued differently according to differences in culture and ideology, but with the emergence of the “global” perspective, is there a form of knowing in which humanity can share? Is it worth pursuing? These questions are essential to the humanities, and essential for them, especially as they seem to be succumbing to the regimes of data and science, forms of knowledge that, too often treated as ends in themselves, become an end to thinking, a substitute for wisdom, and an obstacle to meaning. Paradoxically, the future of knowledge might then lie in not knowing, since what we cannot know is what we all have in common. polymathiē noon echein ou didaskei, said Heraclitus some 2500 years ago—knowing a lot doesn’t teach you understanding. We know this, but never seem to think about it.

Fellow’s Talk: Shiloh Whitney on Affective Injustice

Posted on November 26, 2021January 6, 2022 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

Affective Injustice from Anger Gaslighting to Environmental Despair

Shiloh Whitney (Associate Professor, Philosophy, Fordham University)

with a response by Anna Ziering (English, UConn)

Wednesday, December 8, 2021, 4:00pm. Homer Babbidge Library, 4-209.

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This is an Honors Event. Categories: Multiculturalism & Global Citizenship, Academic & Interdisciplinary Engagement.

Anger gaslighting is behavior that tends to make someone doubt the aptness of her anger. In this talk, I will share some results from my study of the case of anger gaslighting. In particular, I will excavate the concept of giving or refusing uptake to each other’s emotions, and explain how uptake matters for structural injustices like sexism and racism. While the anger gaslighting case is instructive and important in its own right, my goal is to convince you that “uptake injustice” is an important category of affective injustice, one that is scalable beyond the specifics of the case of anger gaslighting. I’ll invoke the cases of environmental despair and “himpathy” as proof of concept. And I’ll suggest some ways that giving and refusing uptake to each other’s emotions is an important category of emotional work.

Shiloh Whitney is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University. Her research lies at the intersection of Feminist Philosophy, Critical Phenomenology, and Philosophy of Emotions. She is currently an external fellow at UConn’s Humanities Institute, writing a book about emotional labor and affective injustice.

Anna Ziering is an English PhD candidate at the University of Connecticut, where she has completed graduate certificates in American Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her teaching and research center on intersectional feminist questions of racial and gender justice in twentieth-century American literature and culture. Her writing, published in MELUS and The Black Scholar, has received the Susan Porter Benson Graduate Research Award (2020) and the Aetna Graduate Critical Writing Award (2017). This year, she is a UCHI Fellow, a PEO Public Scholar, and a recipient of the Wood/Raith Gender Identity Living Trust Fellowship. Her work has also been recognized by the American Association of University Women.

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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.

20 Years of Fellows: Kornel Chang

Posted on November 16, 2021November 16, 2021 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

2019–20 Visiting Fellow Kornel Chang is Associate Professor of History and American Studies at Rutgers University-Newark. His research and teaching interests include Asian American history, the United States in the Pacific world, and race, migration, and labor in the Americas. His current book project, “Beyond North and South,” chronicles the struggles over independence in postwar Korea.

What was your fellowship project about?

My book project, “Beyond North and South,” is a history of the immediate postwar in southern Korea. Following Japan’s surrender in August 1945, Koreans from all walks of life—peasants, workers, women, and the youth—moved quickly to realize the promise of liberation. Their diverse and spirited responses ushered in Korea’s Asian Spring. The entry of American occupying forces, however, complicated and short-circuited this moment of promise and possibility. In chronicling the struggles over Korean independence, my book reveals the paths not taken—the possibilities that could have been—in postwar Korea.

Would you give us an update on the project?

The project is currently under contract with Harvard University Press. I hope to deliver a full manuscript to the press by December 2022.

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

My time at UCHI inspired me to think differently about my writing. It got me thinking about things like texture, color, and pace, as much as the argument. So I started to experiment with my prose and worked with new sources to try to tell a better story. The process was re-invigorating and it prompted me to consider writing for a wider audience. I eventually found a literary agent who pitched the revised book project to trade and cross-over university presses, which resulted in the contract with Harvard University Press.

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

I can’t think of a singular moment but what I remember most fondly about my time was the impromptu conversations I had with the other fellows, staff, and Michael and Alexis in the hallways, over lunch, and during tea time. They were good times filled with laughter, commiserating, and inspiration.

What are you working on now (or next)?

I'm still in midst of writing “Beyond North and South” and can’t imagine thinking about a next project!

With the risk of putting it too simply, I think the future of knowledge will depend upon specialized research and writing and creating ways to deliver those findings to a more general audience.

20 Years of Fellows: Allison Horrocks

Posted on November 2, 2021November 1, 2021 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

What was your fellowship project about?

I completed and defended my dissertation "Good Will Ambassador with a Cookbook: Flemmie Kittrell and the International Politics of Home Economics" in March 2016.

During my fellowship year, I was writing a new history of Home Economics in the 20th century. My research focused on work by academics within the discipline who taught at historically black colleges and served in the field of international relations. One of my larger goals was to shift conceptions of what it might mean to study domesticity at home and abroad. This was the culmination of several years of archival work and study in the history of Home Economics.

Would you give us an update on the project?

I am no longer pursuing the project, though the finished dissertation is publicly available on OpenCommons.

I periodically receive inquiries about the project from journalists or people working in Home Economics today. Some of my much-delayed FOIA requests also continue to come in the mail, all these years later.

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

I think there is a misconception that a fellowship year is a year “off.” My fellowship year allowed me to be even more intentional about my time management, particularly with regards to how I engaged with others in the UConn community. Instead of working alone, in an archive or in my home study, I had a much-needed chance to connect with other scholars.

Overall, my fellowship year at UCHI was essential to my project. I was able to finish along the timeline I had set out for myself and to take care with my final writing and editing stages. While I was at the Institute, I appreciated how the group of fellows was managed. The general approach was non-hierarchical, but not so casual as to be counter-productive. It is hard to find that kind of environment when working as a graduate student.

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

Before I was a fellow and during my fellowship year, I spent many hours in a chair against one of the walls or bookcases in the UCHI conference room. I loved learning from the visiting fellows and seeing new and compelling work presented to a group of peers. I don't know that it was my favorite moment, per se, but I do have a vivid memory of one of these talks. It was from a presentation on logic, given by a philosopher. I did not fully understand all of it, nor did I need to in order to appreciate what was happening in front of me. People were striving to understand, together, and that is an important and rare thing. On my way home that night, I remember realizing that I would never think about doubt in the same way, again. What a gift that speaker gave to me—to all of us.

What are you working on now (or next)?

I am a public historian and I work for the National Park Service. I am currently a Park Ranger at Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park in Pawtucket, RI. I will be working with a team of colleagues on new exhibits and public programs at Slater Mill, a property very recently acquired by NPS.

I am also the co-host of the podcast American Girls, which draws upon my background as a historian of gender and domesticity.

I work at the intersection of historical research and interpretation. I talk to people of all ages and backgrounds about complex concepts such as capitalism and exploitation while also providing a basic orientation to the site where I am employed. Why did I choose to do this line of work given my background as a historian? I have become a public historian in part because being in a classroom did not entirely suit me. I wanted to be immersed with other people in a landscape and to work with them to understand it better. To really do this requires that one actually believe in shared wisdom, and be committed to collective, experiential learning. It also means being out in the world in a way that is necessarily different from serving and educating in a classroom environment. I bring a lot of knowledge to my job, and so do the people who come to my place of work. Sometimes I am convinced that the challenge is not so much learning any one thing in particular but simply acknowledging that we can all teach one another. How do we do this without losing all grip on concepts of authority, and expertise, especially during a crisis? My hope is that we build a better sense of mutual respect between all people, or knowledge alone will not be worth very much.

20 Years of Fellows: Anke Finger

Posted on October 19, 2021March 18, 2022 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

2006–2007 faculty fellow Anke Finger is professor of German, Media Studies, and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies in the department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages at UConn. A co-founder and co-editor (2005–2015) of the multilingual, peer reviewed, open access journal Flusser Studies, Anke Finger’s closely related scholarship in media studies originates from her work on the Czech-Brazilian philosopher Vilém Flusser. She co-authored the 2011 Introduction to Vilém Flusser, and she is a member of the Flusser project team at Greenhouse Studios. She edited Flusser’s The Freedom of the Migrant and co-edited the collection KulturConfusão: On German-Brazilian Interculturalities (2015). From 2016 to 2019 Anke Finger served as the inaugural director of the Digital Humanities and Media Studies Initiative at the Humanities Institute; she also co-founded the CTDH network. Together with Christoph Ernst (University of Bonn), she organized a symposium on “Radical Futures” in March 20–21, 2021. All presentations are available on youtube.

What was your fellowship project about?

Initially, my fellowship project was to be a book about my own family, a case study of former East Germany from an everyday perspective that included education, family dynamics, and politics, focused on my father’s escape via the Baltic Sea in 1974. Turns out that family dynamics were ongoing. It was difficult gathering data and materials, and it became this rather endless tunnel of new discoveries that required constant re-evaluation. To not lose sight of my time at the UCHI, I worked on two other books, The Aesthetics of the Total Artwork (The Johns Hopkins University Press) and the co-authored introduction to Vilém Flusser (University of Minnesota Press) that came out at the same time. The first is a collection of essays about the idea of intersecting art disciplines within modernism and moving well into contemporary art; the second is the first guide to the multilingual, multidisciplinary work of the communication philosopher Vilém Flusser (1920–1991) that has generated a great many studies on his international oeuvre.

Would you give us an update on the project?

The research about my family, including interviews and archival work, is only now finished so that I can write Memoryland during my sabbatical. Frankly, the timing, 60 years after the building of the Berlin Wall, 30 years after reunification, is better today for a number of reasons. The other books have been followed by another Flusser project that is just coming out with the University of Minnesota Press, What If? Twenty-Two Scenarios in Search of Images (2022), and I continue to publish on the idea of the total artwork—I guess the topic just keeps holding my passions and interest.

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

It was the very first occasion I ever had this much time to dedicate to my work. At first, I was a bit paralyzed, I suppose: what to do? A plethora of options. But once I realized I was not able to produce what I had planned I fell into a rhythm and went with the flow. The year certainly shaped my scholarship in that I learned to take a phenomenological approach to my projects and have worked like that ever since: always have several projects in different stages of production since they all need their own time, perspective, and attention.

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

One of the delights of being an early UCHI fellow was the relatively tight quarters in Austin that just made you hang out quite a bit. I remember conversations standing in door frames with my fellow fellows, Michael Lynch and Mark Overmeyer-Velasquez or Robin Greeley, just shooting the breeze and enjoying a cup of coffee we brewed at the end of the hallway. It was intimate and relaxed at the same time.

What are you working on now (or next)?

I am currently promoting or publishing four books, the aforementioned What If? by Vilém Flusser (I introduced, edited and translated the work); a just-out collection on The Digital Dissertation: Knowledge Production in the Arts and Humanities (Open Book Publishers, 2021), with Virginia Kuhn; a collection on Women in German Expressionism: Gender, Sexuality, Activism (University of Michigan Press, 2022), with Julie Shoults; and a collection on Bias, Belief, and Conviction in an Age of Fake Facts (Routledge, 2022), with Manuela Wagner, that is still part of the “Humility and Conviction in Public Life” initiative. I want to focus next on Memoryland, finally, and a monograph on German Expressionism and Colonialism.

Interesting question! UCHI just supported a symposium I organized with a colleague from the University of Bonn that was focused around Flusser’s What If? with the title “Radical Futures: Imagining the Media of Tomorrow.” To me, the future of knowledge has a lot to do with media and mediation, a vantage point that holds both challenges and promises. Who will create, hold, disseminate and dialogue about knowledge? Which media will create pathways and bridges, which mediation structures will withhold and divide knowledge pools? Today, if you create knowledge without communicating with a variety of audiences it will remain silenced. The biggest challenge is the definition of knowledge, I think, given that humans can know in numerous ways; the biggest promise is acknowledging the continuous balancing act between bias, fake facts, and knowledge diversity. Media has a lot to do with this. . .

Tell us a little about your experience as inaugural director of the DHMS initiative at UCHI.

The Humanities Institute, and especially Michael P. Lynch, awarded me the rare opportunity to develop two deep interests of mine, digital scholarship and humanities outreach and advocacy. I was able to build, structure, and inaugurate the new Digital Humanities and Media Studies Initiative, merging two fields that still have some difficulty talking to each other. My colleague Yohei Igarashi is now continuing the programming, for graduate students and interested faculty who are pursuing research methods with qualitative and quantitative computing.

20 Years of Fellows: V. Penelope Pelizzon

Posted on October 4, 2021September 30, 2021 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

2004–2005 faculty fellow V. Penelope Pelizzon’s last poetry collection, Whose Flesh Is Flame, Whose Bone Is Time, was published in 2014 (Waywiser Press). Pelizzon’s awards include a 2020 Quarterly West editor’s choice award for her chapbook Of Vinegar Of Pearl, a 2019 Hawthornden Fellowship, an Amy Lowell Traveling Scholarship, and the Center for Book Arts chapbook award for her collection Human Field. New poems from her next book appear or are forthcoming in Tin House online, Ecotone, 32 Poems, The Bennington Review, The Gettysburg Review, The New England Review, The Harvard Review, Plume, and Orion.

What was your fellowship project about?

My fellowship project in 2004–5 was a long poem in segments, “The Monongahela Book of Hours,” which developed into a central section of my third book. I believe that this was the first creative writing project to be supported by the still-young UCHI, so it was exciting to represent the poetry end of the humanities among my scholarly peers.

Would you give us an update on the project?

“The Monongahela Book of Hours” appeared in my book Whose Flesh Is Flame Whose Bone Is Time (Waywiser, 2014), which was a finalist for the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize. Before appearing in the book, the long poem was published in the American literary journal At Length.

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

The time to slow down and feel and think, allowing new poems to evolve, was crucial to the book’s development. The interactive elements of the fellowship year were sustaining, too—it’s always invigorating to feel part of a thinking community! But perhaps most importantly for a poet, the year allowed me the hours of psychic and emotional privacy my real creative work feeds on. It’s unusual to find that sweet spot, that right measure of community with enough productive solitude for new work to emerge in all its tender / brash / ugly / coltish / uncanny ways.

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

I remember a lot of snowy mornings and late afternoons with the blue light slanting though my UCHI window on the upper floor of the Austin Building, and the nice smells of coffee being brewed by fellows down in the common area...the perfect sensory image of privacy within community.

What are you working on now (or next)?

This spring Quarterly West published my long poem Of Vinegar Of Pearl as the editor’s choice in their annual chapbook series, and I’ve just finished revising another full-length book of poems, Animals & Instruments. Various poems from that collection have come out in print in journals this year. Meanwhile, I have three new poems just started in July that might be disasters or might be the kernel of the next thing—too early yet to tell.

I could say poetry’s best knowledge—and that of the humanities at large—is embodied in discomfort. It’s the knowledge that we don’t yet have language for our full reality, and that, as our realities change, we need more expansive and penetrating language. I could say that it’s hard to empathize with what others are experiencing when we don’t even have rich imaginative language for some of our own most trivial experiences. And by “trivial”—well, here I mean experiences that have been overlooked or scorned by the Adults In Charge. So, one exciting thing is that a lot of long-overlooked stories are now being written. But it also feels a bit disingenuous of me, wearing my poet hat, to speak about “knowledge.” When I’m writing well, what I’m trying to shed are assumptions of authority or the idea that I have anything, even my native language, already figured out.

November 10, 2021

4:00pm

HBL, 4-209

DHMS: Discriminating Data Book Discussion Group

April 27, 2022

4:00pm

HBL, 4-209

20 Years of Fellows: Paul Bloomfield

Posted on September 21, 2021September 22, 2021 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

Paul Bloomfield was a 2007–2008 UCHI faculty fellow and is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of Moral Reality (2001) and The Virtues of Happiness (2014), the editor of Morality and Self-Interest (2008) and the co-editor of Oxford Handbook for Moral Realism (forthcoming), all on Oxford University Press.

What was your fellowship project about?

I work in moral philosophy, broadly construed, and the subject of my UCHI project was the relation of being morally good to living well and being happy. This is, perhaps, the single guiding question of moral philosophy. I argue that all forms of immorality are inherently self-disrespecting, and that self-disrespect and happiness are mutually exclusive. So, the stripped-down argument goes like this:

Morality is necessary for self-respect
Self-respect is necessary for happiness
Therefore, morality is necessary for happiness

What is it to be morally good? I answer this in terms of “the cardinal virtues”: courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. I defend the view that becoming virtuous gives us everything we need to be as happy as is possible for us, given who we are and the circumstances into which we are born.

Would you give us an update on the project?

The project yielded a number of papers but, as a whole, was published as a monograph in 2014 entitled The Virtues of Happiness: A Theory of the Good Life by Oxford University Press. It has been reviewed in numerous journals and was the subject of an “Author Meets Critics” session at the 2016 American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division Meeting.

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

I think what was most useful for me was the way that interacting with my fellow UCHI fellows forced me out of simply speaking to other philosophers and made me develop my views and arguments in ways that are more easily comprehensible to non-specialists. So, the book ended up having less jargon and a slower pace than it would otherwise have had.

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

I have always tried to keep my writing gender neutral and to avoid gendered pronouns. This is easier in philosophy than one might think, if one sticks to plural subjects (“they” or “people”), and impersonal singular pronouns when needed (“one”). When I presented my work to my fellow fellows, I was very pleased when two of them, Sharon Harris (who subsequently became the second director of UCHI) and Brenda Murphy—both of whom are Professors of English—noticed what I was up to and complimented me on my approach and my writing.

What are you working on now (or next)?

I have two major projects going right now. The first is that I am co-editing with Professor David Copp (UC Davis) The Oxford Handbook of Moral Realism. This will be a start of the art collection of views surrounding the idea that there are metaphysical facts about morality—facts about what is good and bad and right and wrong—and that morality is neither to be “eliminated” or “reduced” to emotions or attitudes or some other non-factual basis.

The other project is a monograph focusing on the cardinal virtues, which I mentioned above.

I think there are deep and important moral, social, and political implications to how “knowledge” is understood in the future. As we know, currently information and knowledge is being swamped by misinformation and conspiracy theories and, it now seems, the old idea that in the “marketplace of ideas, truth will win out” has been called into question. Unfortunately, I do not think the most promising ideas are terribly exciting. I think the solution begins with a patient search for common dialectical ground with those with whom we disagree, at least those who are open to reason. Then we will need humility to be open-minded with them and we’ll have to be mature enough to compromise in the name of peace and democratic prosperity. The frightening part is how to handle those who will not listen to reason, and there, I’m afraid, I’ve nothing close to a helpful solution: currently, I see no way to reason with people who are unreasonable.

20 Years of Fellows: Alea Henle

Posted on September 7, 2021September 8, 2021 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

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.

Alea Henle was a 2011–12 dissertation research scholar. A librarian and historian, she is now is Head of Access & Borrow at Miami University. She has a Masters in Library Science from Simmons College and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Connecticut. Over the past years, she’s worked in libraries from Washington, D.C. to Colorado to New Mexico and taught classes in history, librarianship, archives, and records management. Her research interests center on how decisions in libraries, archives, research centers, and commercial database providers increasingly shape the resources available–making materials paradoxically both easier and more difficult to locate.

What was your fellowship project about?
My fellowship project was my dissertation—on historical societies and historical cultures in the early United States and the ways efforts to collect and preserve materials for the writing of American history shape moden practices.

Would you give us an update on the project?
To my very great delight, the book based on the dissertation came out last year! Rescued from Oblivion: Historical Cultures in the Early United States is available from the University of Massachusetts Press, as part of the Public History in Historical Perspective series.

How did your fellowship year shape your project, or shape your scholarship in general?
The fellowship gave me time and space to think through how to organize the immense wealth of research I’d already accumulated—and the additional material that I kept coming across. I also appreciate the interactions with other fellows and their comments and suggestions—and, of course, the opportunity to learn about the wonderful projects they were working on!

Would you share a favorite memory from your time as a UCHI fellow?
I think it was at our original go-around where we discussed our research projects (or perhaps it was when a particular scholar presented) but one of the key phrases that remains with me came from another fellow’s project: a worm in a box is never just a worm in a box.

What are you working on now (or next)?
Oh, I’m working on multiple fronts at the moment. As a historian, I’ve slid into the early 20th century and am currently exploring early postcards—specifically batches of postcards that were sent to one person or individual (where possible, from the same person). I blog about this at aleahenle.com about once a week. Then I’m also working on library scholarship (since I have a Ph.D. in history but my day-to-day job is as a librarian), with a current project focusing on valuations of library collections for insurance purposes. And in my personal time (not spare time—that’s something I don’t really have) I’ve started writing (and indie publishing) contemporary and historical fantasy. Whew!

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 challenges facing the future of knowledge?
Here I’m going to put on both my historian and librarian hats—these include the pervasive multiplicity of information and the fragility of many of the ever-increasing formats. Ironically, paper is much more robust a medium for historical purposes than many digital formats as the latter often require specialized software and/or technology. My original research as a fellow, after all, was about early efforts to deal with preserving information/knowledge! Then there are also the witting and unwitting discussions about sources of knowledge versus sources of information—who’s an expert and/or trustworthy and who isn’t (and what criteria is used to decide). It’s all very new—and very old.

Remembrance of Things UCHI

Posted on September 1, 2021September 1, 2021 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

As part of our 20th anniversary celebrations, UCHI’s founding director, Professor Richard Brown (History), shares remembrances of the early years and reflects on the significance of the Humanities Institute as it reaches this important milestone, and on the importance of the humanities, as we contemplate the future of knowledge.

When Ross MacKinnon, Dean of CLAS, invited candidates to head the humanities institute, he offered no specific vision of the institute; however, he conveyed two principal ideas: first, since the natural sciences already commanded substantial University support it was appropriate to commit resources to enhance the humanities; second, since fellowships for humanities scholarship were exceedingly scarce, a humanities institute could enable UConn faculty to excel when humanities institutes at competing universities were developing.

At the time of my appointment the University’s chronic budgetary stringency determined my first goal: a strong foundation for the UCHI budget. Though Dean MacKinnon (a geographer) was a powerful supporter, deans come and go. The next dean might terminate the UCHI. So, accompanied by Dean MacKinnon, I asked Provost John Petersen (a chemist), to match the CLAS support. Recognizing MacKinnon’s commitment, Petersen immediately agreed. Next, I turned to the Interim Vice Provost for Research and Graduate Education, Ian Hart (agricultural economics), to obtain support for graduate student fellowships. Hart agreed to fund two graduate fellowships for doctoral students. Funding in place, we organized.

It is said that “personnel is policy.” Jo-Ann Waide-Wunschel, who just retired, was our first staff hire. Her administrative acumen, cheerful demeanor, and human skills enabled UCHI to mobilize quickly. When Professor Françoise Dussart, a humanistic anthropologist, agreed to serve as associate director we began to plan the institute. Her interests and knowledge complemented mine. In addition, she enabled UCHI to model mixed-gender leadership—she would head UCHI during my leave. And by bringing diverse interests and disciplines to policymaking, the UCHI advisory committee enabled us to represent and serve multiple departments. The advisory committee also selected external UCHI fellows and graduate student fellows.

Perhaps the most challenging task at first was choosing UConn faculty fellows. As a new entity, UCHI needed to earn credibility with the administration, departments, and individual faculty. To assure that local friendships and departmental politics did not taint selection, UCHI paid distinguished external scholars (always two women, two men) to assess and select internal candidates. The external scholars served staggered two-year terms so as to achieve consistency and continuity. Each year we welcomed incoming faculty, visiting scholars, and graduate student fellows at a reception.

To enhance UConn faculty success in external fellowship competitions UCHI provided workshops and individual counsel regarding applications, while also using National Endowment for the Humanities format for its own applications. UCHI worked to collaborate beyond CLAS humanities departments, developing programs with Art and Art History, Dramatic Arts, and Music, as well as the Human Rights Institute. In addition, UCHI supported humanist-oriented projects from Family Studies, Linguistics, Political Science.

Fellows’ talks, both formal and informal, as well as faculty lunch-time presentations supplied lively exchanges of ideas that helped penetrate disciplinary “silos” to promote intellectual cross-fertilization. Since creative excellence in scholarship was our mission, with support from the CLAS dean we began a biennial celebration of the many books UConn humanists published, reinforcing mutual recognition of the excellence of faculty scholarship.

All scholars engage in the “production of knowledge.” Humanists, however, also provide analysis and criticism of how and why societies produce knowledge. Research in the humanities disciplines is well suited for such analysis and criticism. By studying not only objective realities, but also ways of thinking and acting—ideas, emotions, and behavior, both in the present and in the past—humanists, including those at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, help us to understand ourselves in the world.

Richard D. Brown, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of History, Emeritus, is a 1961 graduate of Oberlin College who attended Harvard on a Woodrow Wilson Scholarship, earning his Ph.D. in 1966. Before coming to the University of Connecticut in 1971, he taught as a Fulbright lecturer in France and at Oberlin College. His research and teaching interests have been in the political, social, and cultural history of early America. A past president of the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic and the New England Historical Association, Brown has held fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others. He currently serves as president of New England Quarterly, owner and publisher of that journal. Most recently he is the author of Self-Evident Truths: Contesting Equal Rights from the Revolution to the Civil War (Yale University Press, 2017). He is also the author of Knowledge is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700-1865 and The Strength of a People: The Idea of an Informed Citizenry in America, 1650-1870. With Irene Quenzler Brown he is the co-author of The Hanging of Ephraim Wheeler: A Story of Rape, Incest, and Justice in Early America.

Affective Injustice from Anger Gaslighting to Environmental Despair

Shiloh Whitney (Associate Professor, Philosophy, Fordham University)

with a response by Anna Ziering (English, UConn)

Wednesday, December 8, 2021, 4:00pm. Homer Babbidge Library, 4-209.

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Access note

Publishing NOW: How to Start a Series and How to Write for One

Publishing NOW: How to Apply for a UConn Internal Grant

Fellow’s Talk: Drew Johnson

Fellow’s Talk: Carol Gray

DHMS: Algorithmic Arts and Humanities at UConn

DHMS: Jessica Johnson and Kim Gallon on Black Beyond Data

Fellow’s Talk: Erik Freeman

Publishing NOW: Publishing about Politics after (?) Trump

Fellow’s Talk: Anna Ziering

Dissertation Grant Writing Workshop

DHMS: Daniel Rosenberg on the History of Data and Information

Fellow’s Talk: Sarah Willen

DHMS: Discriminating Data Book Discussion Group

DHMS: Wendy Chun on Discriminating Data

Publishing NOW: How to Publish for the Public

Fellow’s Talk: Shiloh Whitney

Fellow’s Talk: Meina Cai

Publishing NOW: How to Write about Race Now

Fellow’s Talk: Laura Mauldin

DHMS: Anke Finger on The Digital Dissertation

DHMS: Audrey Watters on Teaching Machines

Fellow’s Talk: Kathryn Moore

Fellow’s Talk: Prakash Kashwan

Fellow’s Talk: Micki McElya

Publishing NOW: How to Work with an Academic Press

Fellow’s Talk: Shardé Davis

Nikole Hannah-Jones

Fellow’s Talk: Sherie Randolph

Fellow’s Talk: Fiona Vernal

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