Message From the Director and Associate Director

Thanks to the initiative of Ross MacKinnon, the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and with the support of Chancellor John Petersen and Vice Provost Ian Hart, the newly created Humanities Institute opened its suite in the renovated CLAS building in September 2001. It has been a busy year full of learning experiences for us as we planned and organized activities sponsored by the Institute. In November 2001, we both attended the annual conference of the consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes. About 60 Directors and Associate Directors from the US and Europe participated in the conference, giving us the opportunity to learn from their experiences.

We are fortunate at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute in that we have attractive, well-equipped facilities (eight offices and two seminar rooms) and extremely supportive colleagues in the Dean of CLAS, the Chancellor and the Vice Provost.

We also enjoy the counsel of a supportive faculty governing body, the UCHI Advisory Board. During 2001-2002 the founding board members were professors John Davis (History), Jean Givens (Art and Art History), David Herzberger (Modern and Classical Languages), Margaret Higonnet (English), Joel Kupperman (Philosophy), Veronica Makowsky (English), Thomas Morawetz (Law School), Deborah Muirhead (Art and Art History), and Jerry Phillips (English), in addition to Richard D. Brown and Françoise Dussart. Our board members have all taken an active role in determining the program and governing principles for the Institute. We are grateful for their substantial efforts in launching our programs and for their wise judgments in setting policy. We want to thank especially Margaret Higonnet, Joel Kupperman, and Deborah Muirhead who are leaving the board and will be succeeded for two years by Professors Katharina von Hammerstein (Modern and Classical Languages), Betty Hanson (Political Science), and Richard Peterson (English). In January 2002 we were also fortunate to add Jo-Ann Waide to our staff as our administrative assistant. We daily observe and admire her dedication, competence, and cheerful professionalism.

Most important, we are fortunate to be able to offer a substantial fellowship program of up to six annual fellowships to UConn faculty, two external fellowships to scholars and creative humanists beyond our walls, as well as awards for both graduate students (two year-long dissertation awards) and undergraduates to aid them in their research projects.

--Richard D. Brown (Director) and Françoise Dussart (Associate Director)

Activities

Participation in our monthly luncheon talks has been substantial, suggesting that opportunities for faculty collegiality on our campuses are welcome. The luncheon talks have been intellectually stimulating and well attended by faculty and graduate students from across campuses and departments. In addition, the Institute co-sponsored the exhibition of The Mystical Arts of Tibet, organized by the Benton Museum which ran from January until March 2002, and the International Colloquium in 20th and 21st-Century French Studies conference in April 2002. The Institute also provided support for guest speakers participating in a course sponsored by the Honors Program and Medieval Studies titled, "Interpreting King Arthur: Historical, Literary, and Sociological Views of a Cultural Icon."

With the assistance of the Institute of Comparative Human Rights, the Humanities Institute organized a forum on March 12th, 2002 in which both Professor Amii Omara-Otunnu, UNESCO Chair of Comparative Human Rights and Executive Director of the Institute of Comparative Human Rights, and Dr. Lorna Gonsalves, Associate Executive Director and Director of Global Outreach, shared their reflections on the World Conference Against Racism at Durban, South Africa in which they both participated. This Conference brought together NGOs and government officials from around the globe to address issues pertaining to racism and other forms of intolerance.

A University of Connecticut Humanities Institute conference for 2003, tentatively titled, "Public and Private Uses of Violence," is being organized by Professor Margaret Higonnet (English). In addition, Professor David Herzberger (Modern Languages) together with a committee of colleagues from English and Art and Art History, is organizing a conference on photojournalism for 2004. In addition, the UCHI will co-sponsor (with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Professor J.C. Beall (Philosophy) for a Fall 2002 conference on "Liars and Heaps: The Logic and Semantics of Paradox." The UCHI is also co-sponsoring Professor Emeritus Allen M. Ward (History) to organize the conference of the New England Classical Studies Association at the University of Connecticut in 2003, and Professor Kenneth Gouwens to organize the New England Renaissance Conference at the University of Connecticut in 2004.

Finally, we are eager to welcome our inaugural fellows in September 2002. The University of Connecticut scholars were selected by a panel including Professors Jean-Chistophe Agnew (American Studies, Yale University), Carlos Alonso (Romance Languages, University of Pennsylvania), Martha Joukowsky (Old World Archaeology and Art, and Anthropology, Brown University), and Elaine Scarry (English, Harvard University). The screening committee for the external scholars included Advisory Board members Joel Kupperman (Chair), John Davis (Chair), Katharina von Hammerstein, and Bruce Stave served on the selection committee which awarded two dissertation fellowship awards. We hope you will join us to share in the activities of the Humanities Institute in the coming year.

Inaugural Residential Fellows

In September we will welcome our inaugural year of fellows:

Professors Christopher Clark (History) and Fred Inglis (Cultural Studies) will both arrive from the UK. Professor Clark (University of Warwick) will work on a project titled, "Transformations in American Society, 1770-1870," and Professor Inglis (University of Sheffield), his project titled, "The Performance of Celebrity."

Six University of Connecticut Professors will also be in residence working on their respective projects: Susan Porter Benson (History), "Work Ethics: Women's Views of Paid Work in the USA, 1925-1935;" Frank Costigliola (History), "Guns and Kisses in the Kremlin and Other Moments in the Formation of the Cold War, 1941-1947;" Anne D'Alleva (Art History and Women's Studies), "Pacific Evangelicals: Art, Religion, and Society in Nineteenth-Century Polynesia;" Anita Garey (Family Studies and Sociology), "Truancy Courts: Arenas of Cultural Negotiation;" Margaret Gilbert (Philosophy), "Rights Reconsidered;" Kenneth Gouwens (History), deferring until 2003-2004, "Clement VII and the Crisis of the Renaissance Papacy;" and Ross Miller (English), "Land that I Love: How the Jews Discovered America."

Our graduate fellows, Mr. Jonathan Carlyon (Modern and Classical Languages/Spanish) and Ms. Jennifer Spinner (English) will join the Institute to work on their dissertation projects. Mr. Carlyon will work on "The Americanist Andrés González de Barcia Carballido y Zúniga (1673-1743) and the Creation of the Colonial Spanish American Library," and Ms. Spinner will work on "Of Woman and the Essay: An Anthology from the Seventeenth Century to the present.

Luncheon Talks 2001-2002

The Fall luncheon talks were inaugurated by C. David Benson, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of English on September 25, 2001. "Why Chaucerians Don't Talk About Chaucer Anymore," was the title of his talk. Benson discussed the state of Chaucer studies and went on to explain his interest in "Piers Plowman," another 14th-century work that survives in multiple texts.

On October 23, 2001, Deborah Muirhead, Professor of Art and Art History, presented an illustrated lecture called, "Text and Image: A Narrative of Identity," in which she explained the ideas and techniques that go into the creation of her "artist books," in this case books that resemble the nineteenth-century diaries, record books, and printed works that inform her research into personal history and identity among enslaved Americans and their free descendants.

Cyrus E. Zirakzadeh, Professor of Political Science, on November 27, 2001, discussed "Comparative Politics as a Literary Genre Among Twentieth-Century Comparativists." He noted that many have been displaced persons or refugees whose personal experience with political systems has led them to critical, even pessimistic perspectives. In addition, Zirakzadeh surmised that the field attracts persons who are interested in other polities because they are in some measure disaffected from their own political circumstances.

Our luncheon for the Spring semester 2002 featured Donald L.M. Baxter, Professor of Philosophy. In his February 26, 2002 talk, "Altruism, Grief, and Identity," Baxter discussed how the divide between oneself and others has made altruism seem irrational to some thinkers. He used characterizations of grief, especially by Saint Augustine, to question the theoretical divide. In his analysis, he applied a metaphysics of parts and wholes to make literal sense of those characterizations.

On March 26, 2002, Samuel Martinez, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, examined the importance of "Situating Human Rights Reportage in the Humanitarian Tradition: A Caribbean Case Study." He discussed the substantive and formal likeness between recent reports of "new slavery" on the sugar plantations of the Dominican Republic and nineteenth and early twentieth-century abolitionist and imperial reform texts. His discussion was based on textual comparisons, interviews with human rights investigators, and Martinez's own ethnographic fieldwork in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

April 23, 2002 was our last presentation by Nancy Shoemaker, Associate Professor of History. She discussed "Kings: American Indian and European Ideas about Political Authority in the 18th Century." In her talk, Shoemaker presented the main argument of the final chapter of the book she is currently finishing in which she analyses and compares eighteenth century American Indian and European concepts of land ownership and hierarchy.