UConn

Fellows Talk: Emma Amador on Community and Politics in the Puerto Rican Diaspora

Posted on January 16, 2020January 16, 2020 by

Demanding Dignity: Social Workers, Community Organizing, and Welfare Politics in the Puerto Rican Diaspora after 1948

Emma Amador, Ph.D. (History Department, University of Connecticut)

January 29, 2020 – 4 to 5PM (UCHI Conference Room: Babbidge Library, 4th Floor South)

This presentation will explore histories of organizing for social services within Puerto Rican communities in the United States. It will begin by examining the role of Puerto Rican women social workers as architects of the Migration Division of the Puerto Rican government’s Department of Labor after 1948, showing how within this state agency a generation of social workers challenged the racial and gender discrimination faced by Puerto Rican migrants seeking social services, housing, and care in the US. It will then show how this activism fostered the emergence of a new generation of social worker activists who in the 1960s and 70s moved into new roles as community organizers and civil rights activists. By focusing on Puerto Rican social workers role in shaping and challenging U.S. social welfare institutions to better address colonial and migrant citizens, this paper historicizes their ongoing struggle to demand dignity and social justice.

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057.

Who is Emma Amador?

Emma Amador is an Assistant Professor of History and Latina/o, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies. Her work focuses on Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans, and U.S. Latina/o/x History with an emphasis on women, gender, and race. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, an M.A. from UConn, and a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. Before returning to UConn she held a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship at Brown University in the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the History Department (2016-2018). She is currently completing a book manuscript, Contesting Colonialism: Puerto Ricans and the Politics of Welfare in the 20th Century that explores the history of welfare, territorial social citizenship, and struggles for social rights in Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican diaspora. This project examines how the U.S. welfare state became a site where Puerto Ricans have fought for social justice, labor reform, and decolonization. Her work has received support from Brown University, the SITPA Scholar Mellon Program at Duke University, the Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at CUNY, Hunter College, and the Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan.

UCHI Hosts Microsoft’s Nancy Baym Talk on Social Media and Human Interactions

Posted on January 13, 2020January 22, 2020 by

The Relational Affordances of Platforms

By Nancy K. Baym

People have been socializing on the internet for nearly fifty years. In recent years, online social life has become increasingly concentrated in a relatively small number of commercial platforms. How can we make sense of the impacts they are having on our relational lives? How can we theorize platforms when they are constantly changing and used in so many different ways? In this talk, Nancy Baym draws on a range of her recent research on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to articulate a model for understanding platforms as the dynamic, unstable entities they are, and to explore their roles in shaping, constraining and opening up new possibilities for relationships in contexts ranging from close romantic bonds to online communities and the ties that connect musicians to their audiences. The talk further considers how these platforms commodify the relational interactions that take place through them, and how their design choices have fostered environments in which relationships become tools for profit.

Join us on Wednesday, February 5 2020, at 4PM at the UCHI Conference Room, Babbidge Library, Fourth Floor.

Co-Sponsored by UConn Department of Communication, and UCHI’s Digital Humanities and Media Studies (DHMS) and The Future of Truth (TFOT) initiatives.

Through the generous gift of her honorarium, Nancy K. Baym is supporting the Humanities Institute’s Digital Toolbox Working Group for the 2019–20 academic year.

Nancy Baym

Senior Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research New England
Research Affiliate, Comparative Media Studies/Writing, MIT

Nancy Baym is a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, where she conducts basic research into how people understand and act with new communication technologies in their relationships. A pioneer in the field of internet research, Baym wrote some of the first articles about online community in the early 1990s. With Jean Burgess, she is the author of Twitter: A Biography (forthcoming 2020, NYU). Other books include Playing to the Crowd: Musicians, Audiences, and the Intimate Work of Connection(2018, NYU), Personal Connections in the Digital Age (2010, Second Edition 2014, Polity), Internet Inquiry: Conversations About Method (co-edited with Annette Markham, 2010, Sage), and Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom and Online Community (2000, Sage). She was a co-founder of the Association of Internet Researchers and served as its second president. She has been recognized with the Frederick Williams Prize for Contributions to the Study of Communication and Technology awarded by the International Communication Association, the naming of the Nancy Baym Book Award by the Association of Internet Researchers, and an Honorary Doctorate from the Faculty of Information Technology at the University of Gothenburg. Most of her papers and more information are available at nancybaym.com.

You Should…See: Shoplifters (Françoise Dussart, UConn-Anthropology)

Posted on January 10, 2020January 10, 2020 by

Cover photo of the five members of the household in the movie Shoplifters You Should take the time to watch Shoplifters by Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda who is often compared to Kurosawa, Bergman, and other great humanists of the cinema.

Shoplifters—inspired by a local news story—is the best movie I have seen in 2018–2019. And yes, I watch a lot of movies!

Shoplifters is a subtle Dickensian tale in a contemporary modern crowded Tokyo.

Shoplifters is about five members of a household: Osamu, Nobuyo, Shota, Aki a-k-a Sayaka, and Grandma who adopt a starving little girl Yuri.

Shoplifters is about the kinship bonds we develop with strangers we chose to love.

Shoplifters is about empathy, generosity, compulsive kindness and incredibly moving moments of joy.

Shoplifters is about trauma, fear of poverty and coming-of-age.

Shoplifters is about three generations of Invisible people in a cold and judgmental capitalist world.

Shoplifters is about people nursing secrets and lies which should never be revealed.

Shoplifters reveals a paradox that despite shoplifting, cheating and coning, Osamu, Nobuyo, Shota, Aki and Grandma create a happier life for little Yuri than her violent law-abiding parents.

Shoplifters is a magical film with overwhelming endings.

Oh, and You Should see Shoplifters because it requires reading subtitles…

– Françoise Dussart
Professor of Anthropology & WGSS
University of Connecticut

Photo of Françoise Dussart

Who is Françoise Dussart? Françoise is a professor of anthropology and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Uconn. Trained in France and Australia, her specialties in social anthropology include Australian Aboriginal society and culture (as well as other Fourth World Peoples), iconography and visual systems, various expressions of gender, ritual and social organization, health and citizenship. She is currently curating the very first major presentation of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts from Australia in Canada, at the Musée de la Civilisation in Quebec City.

Alexis Boylan Lead Author of New Book on Feminism and Mad Max

Posted on December 18, 2019December 18, 2019 by

University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) Director of Academic Affairs, Alexis Boylan, is the lead author of a new book entitled Furious Feminisms: Alternative Routes on Mad Max: Fury Road (University of Minnesota Press, 2019). The book uses the feminist credentials of George Miller’s 2015 Mad Max: Fury Road film to ask “what is possible, desirable, or damaging in theorizing feminism in the contested landscape of the twenty-first century.” The authors tackle this issue from four different disciplinary angles: art history, American literature, disability studies, and sociology. Other authors of the book are Anna Mae Duane, associate professor of English at UConn and a UCHI Class of 2016-2017 Fellow; Michael Gill, an associate professor of disability studies in the department of Cultural Foundations of Education at Syracuse University; and Barbara Gurr, associate professor in residence in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at UConn.

UCHI Director Lynch Honored at the BOT Distinguished Professor’s Reception

Posted on December 12, 2019December 12, 2019 by

The University of Connecticut Humanities Institute director, Michael Lynch, has been officially named a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor at UConn. This award is the highest honor that UConn bestows upon those faculty who have demonstrated excellence in teaching, research, and service. Michael Lynch and the other recipients were honored during a reception hosted by the Board of Trustees earlier in December. Other recipients this year included Emmanouil N. Anagnostou – Civil and Environmental Engineering and Cathy Schlund-Vials – English and Asian/Asian American Studies.

UCHI Assistant Director Author of a New Book on the Romantic Period

Posted on December 4, 2019December 4, 2019 by

Yohei Igarashi, the Assistant Director of Digital Humanities and Media Studies at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) is the author of a new book entitled The Connected Condition: Romanticism and the Dream of Communication (Stanford University Press). According to the website of the publisher, “the Romantic poet’s intense yearning to share thoughts and feelings often finds expression in a style that thwarts a connection with readers. Yohei Igarashi addresses this paradox by reimagining Romantic poetry as a response to the beginnings of the information age. Data collection, rampant connectivity, and efficient communication became powerful social norms during this period. The Connected Condition argues that poets responded to these developments by probing the underlying fantasy: the perfect transfer of thoughts, feelings, and information, along with media that might make such communication possible.” Igarashi, also an associate professor of English at UConn, has authored many articles on Romanticism and poetry, including in New Literary History, Romantic Circles, and Studies in Romanticism; the latter of which received the Keats-Shelley Association of America annual essay prize in 2015.

UCHI and Global Affairs Announce Global Distinguished Humanities Fellowship

Posted on November 11, 2019November 14, 2019 by

In partnership with UConn Global Affairs, the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) is excited to announce its new Global Distinguished Humanities Fellowship (GDHF). In an effort to strengthen UConn’s commitment to the global community, this fellowship will sponsor an international faculty scholar to visit, learn from, and engage with UConn’s humanities departments.

At a moment when the humanities’ most urgent issues are expanding to touch all corners of the globe, this initiative seeks to foster international collaboration and highlight the importance of the humanities in creating a future that speaks globally to social justice, equity, and the environment. Through public lectures, faculty workshops, talks with graduate students, or other forms of engagement, the recipient of this award will challenge the UConn community to reassess the stakes of its scholarship and service, broadening the horizons of humanistic inquiry for global complexities.

Interested UConn faculty, with the endorsement of their department heads, can nominate an international faculty scholar to visit the UConn Storrs campus for no less than one week and no more than one month.During this time, the scholar will have an office space in UCHI and will be expected to participate actively in the UConn community. International faculty scholars must be from institutions with which UConn has an ongoing MOU (Memorandum of Understanding). Funding for this fellowship totals $10,000 and is expected to include the scholar’s honoraria, travel, and housing during their visit.

Applications are due by March 2, 2020 at 5 p.m.

For more information and to submit an application, visit the fellowship’s webpage.

UConn Faculty and Graduate Students Among UNH-Mellon Grant Winners

Posted on October 23, 2019October 23, 2019 by

University of New Hampshire (UNH) Center for the Humanities announced the names of its 2019 Summer Institute in Public Humanities seed grant winners. The seed grant was funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. UNH is a member of the New England Humanities Consortium, of which the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) is a founding member and current executive and administrative hub. Among the winners are two UConn faculty members and one graduate student:

Megan Fountain, UConn graduate student pursuing a Master of Arts in Latino and Latin American Studies
“The Guatemala-Connecticut Community History Project”
Documenting and archiving oral histories of Guatemalan immigrants and their families in Guatemala
Community Partners: A committee of Guatemalan immigrants and community activists including Unidad Latina en Accion (ULA), a grassroots organization; a team of public historians and New Haven Public Schools teachers; Columbia Center for Oral History Research; and Groundswell: Oral History for Social Change.

Fiona Vernal, UConn associate professor of history
“A Caribbean Museum”
Community-based archival collecting to lead to an oral history initiative including one-week traveling pop-up exhibits, a migration exhibit to launch the Caribbean Museum, and salons (panel discussions) about public housing, mobility, and migration
Community Partners: Connecticut Humanities Council (CHC), The Hartford History Center at the Hartford Public Library, The West Indian Social Club (WISC), and El Instituto: The Institute of Latino, Caribbean and Latin American Studies (ELIN) at UConn, Hartford Public Schools, CREC (Capital Region Education Council)

Walter Woodward, UConn associate professor of history and Connecticut State Historian
“Doing Public Humanities: An Audio Field Guide”
A multi-episode web-based podcast as an audio roadmap into how to practice engaged public humanities
Community Partners: case history participants (faculty doing public humanities)

Word Poetry Books Becomes UConn’s First Major Publishing Initiative

Posted on September 18, 2019September 23, 2019 by

Consider what your bookshelf might look like if you were to remove every book that has been translated—every Homer, Sappho, Rumi, Li Po, Szymborska, Neruda, or the Bible. Imagine removing every book by an author whose work has been influenced and shaped by a translation. Exceptional literature needs exceptional translators to bring it to life in a new language.

The University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) is proud to announce World Poetry Books (WPB) as a new collaborative initiative with Dr. Peter Constantine, professor of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages at the University of Connecticut (UConn). Based at UConn, WPB is the only publisher in the United States dedicated solely to publishing books of international poetry in English translation. As a press, our goal is to champion poets and translators from all stages of their careers by creating new communities of readers both inside and outside of the university. We believe every language has its Walt Whitman, its C.P. Cavafy, or Anne Carson, yet most world poetry—especially poetry from underrepresented languages—remains under-published and undiscovered. Our mission is to publish and promote books of vital world poetry from languages other than English. We invite our readers to celebrate the art of translation, so essential to the vibrant circulation of words and ideas. To find out more, and to purchase books, please visit us at: www.worldpoetrybooks.com

You Should…Read: Jonathan White’s Tides (Alain Frogley-School of Fine Arts Associate Dean)

Posted on September 12, 2019September 16, 2019 by

Whether it’s beach season, the fiftieth anniversary of the first moon landing, or our daily proximity in Connecticut to vast bodies of water in only partly predictable motion, there are plenty of reasons right now why you should read Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean by Jonathan White (San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 2017). But the most important is that it’s a wonderful book. White offers an all-too-rare example of a narrative that brings together science, art, and the humanities in a way that is much more than the sum of their parts (and never less). The art is mostly in the writing. Unpretentiously beautiful, it effortlessly weaves together complex science, cultural history, ecology, and even the engineering and economics of generating electric power, with compelling vignettes of the author’s close encounters with his subject, and the lives of those who rely upon it for their survival. Which is, ultimately, all of us; but White is particularly sensitive to the experience of indigenous peoples across the globe, who are frequently both custodians of ancient oceanic knowledge and the first casualties of climate change. He brings to bear decades of experience as a sailor, surfer, and conservationist, to offer a vision that is passionate but never preachy. So read it now, before all too soon you’ll have time only to think about grading papers and shoveling snow.

– Alain Frogley, DPhil
Associate Dean, School of Fine Arts & Professor of Music History
University of Connecticut

Who is Alain Frogley? Alain Frogley is a native of Great Britain and holds degrees from Oxford University and the University of California at Berkeley. He has taught at Oxford and Lancaster universities and in 1994 was appointed to the faculty of the University of Connecticut. He is a specialist in the music of the late-19th and 20th centuries, particularly that of Britain and America, but he has also worked on the cultural contexts of musical nationalism. His most recent work includes research into the reception of British music in Nazi Germany and racial Anglo-Saxonism in music. In 2005–2006 he was a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies.

Humanities Institute