Grants

UConn Humanities Institute Awarded Grant to Build Glossary for AI Research

Posted on February 26, 2025 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

The Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) has awarded the UConn Humanities Institute (UCHI) a grant of $25,000 for their project “Reading Between the Lines: An Interdisciplinary Glossary for Human-Centered AI.” Funded by CHCI’s Human Craft in the Age of Digital Technologies Initiative, this grant will allow UCHI along with our partners at the International University of Rabat (UIR) to create an interdisciplinary glossary that interrogates the meaning of key AI concepts.

This project brings an international cohort of humanists, engineers, and scientists into conversation through an in-person symposium and a series of podcast dialogues illuminating how the definitions of terms associated with Artificial Intelligence vary widely by discipline, location, and language. The symposium and the podcasts will be structured to address the challenges that language and translation (both conceptual and linguistic) pose to collaboration on AI research.

“We often use the same words—like ‘learning’ or ‘intelligence’—when we are talking about AI, but what those words mean depend on our own academic and cultural background and the assumptions that accompany them,” notes Anna Mae Duane, PI and Director of the UConn Humanities Institute. “The humanities bring crucial insights about language and meaning that can help us to engage these gaps in constructive ways. Working with our partners at the International University of Rabat in Morocco, we’ll bring together voices from computer science, medicine, law, and the humanities to develop better ways of understanding each other and this transformative technology.”

This project showcases UCHI’s interdisciplinarity and its growing global connections. “Reading Between the Lines” draws on the expertise of the Humanistic AI Working Group, a cross-disciplinary team of over twenty UConn researchers, who have been meeting monthly since Fall 2024, and deepens UCHI’s pre-existing partnership with AI scholars at UIR. Through CHCI’s Human Craft in the Age of Digital Technologies Initiative, the grant project will bring UCHI and affiliated faculty into conversation with additional humanities centers and institutes all over the world who are launching projects related to AI, digital technologies, and the human.

The project is being led by Anna Mae Duane, UCHI Director and Professor of English, with the support of collaborators including Clarissa J. Ceglio, UCHI Associate Director of Collaborative Research and Associate Professor of Digital Humanities; Nasya Al-Saidy, UCHI Managing Director; Dan Weiner, Vice Provost of UConn Global Affairs; Allison Cassaly, Global Initiatives Coordinator, UConn Global Affairs; and Ihsane Hmamouchi, Vice-Dean at the International Faculty of Medicine at the International University of Rabat.

UConn Humanities Institute Awarded NEH Grant to Examine Slavery and AI

Posted on May 14, 2024May 14, 2024 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

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

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

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

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

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

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

UCHI: A Year in Review

Posted on January 17, 2020April 25, 2022 by

Thanks to the generous support of the University of Connecticut Provost’s Office, Graduate School, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and UConn Foundation, as well as our own grants, we have had quite a productive year so far. We have been able to fund 13 residential fellowships this year, including three visiting fellows, six UConn faculties, and four UConn graduate dissertation fellows. We funded and co-sponsored various events and programs, including a lecture and book signing by celebrated author, Colson Whitehead, presentations by award-winning and celebrated scholars and activities, Annette Vee, Rebecca Traister, and Aruna D’Souza, and the rare chance to see a performance by distinguished flamenco guitar player, Oscar Herrero.

We also welcomed World Poetry Books, the only publisher in the United States dedicated solely to publishing books of international poetry in English Translation, and we kicked off our The Future of Truth initiative with a 275,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. We work hard to cultivate creativity among scholars of the arts and humanities at UConn, but we also find inspiration in the achievements and successes of our fellows, long after they leave UCHI.