The Humanities Center at the University of Hartford embodies a decades-long commitment to the humanities from UHart scholars in literature, languages, history (including art and music history), philosophy, cinema, rhetoric, creative writing and the communication arts.
About Us
The Humanities Center aims to provide greater visibility for the humanities at UHart and to furnish venues for interdisciplinary exchanges across the humanities and the arts, sciences, technology, media, music, psychology, film, philosophy, history, and literature. It was founded in the University’s College of Arts and Sciences through a National Endowment for the Humanities grant.
What We Do
Year-Long Honors Seminars
Each year, the Humanities Center sponsors a year-long honors seminar featuring a topic chosen and taught by a full-time Faculty Fellow. Students of high achievement, from across all programs of study, can apply to take the honors seminar and become a Student Fellow. Student Fellows are eligible to receive a $500 scholarship once accepted to the honors seminar.
Spring Lecture Series
The Humanities Center also sponsors a lecture series that is open to the public each spring and is based on the topic of the honors seminar. Up to four University of Hartford full-time faculty, chosen as Faculty Fellows of the center, speak in the lecture series. The remaining speakers are both on- and off-campus experts on subjects related to that year’s topic.
Honors Seminar Topics
2024-25: Banned Books and Censorship
Led by Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies and History Ayelet Brinn, this seminar examines the history and politics of banning, censoring, and burning books, both in the United States and abroad. Reflected most recently in the rise in book banning in schools and libraries, censorship tends to focus on texts that stretch social boundaries in their depictions of race, sexuality, politics, gender, religion, and science. Students will study banned books and censored materials within their historical context, compare and contrast the treatment of different texts across time and space, and examine the relationship between power, culture, and literacy in society. Students will also engage with banned texts (e.g., writings by Galileo, Darwin, Judy Blume) and the history of censorship (e.g., the Espionage Act of 1917, the Hays Code, Supreme Court decisions) while developing strategies for critically analyzing the arguments made for and against such censoring.
Seven UHart Humanities Center Faculty Fellows will speak on selected Wednesdays from 5–6 p.m. in spring 2025.
- 2023-24: Fiction, Fabulation, Futurity
Faculty Fellow: Rashmi Viswanathan, Art History - 2022-23: Decolonizing the University: Ethnic Studies through Time
Faculty Fellow: Karen Tejada, Sociology - 2021-22: Fearing the Unknown – Irrationality, Anti-Politics, and Conspiracy Theories
Faculty Fellow: Marco Cupolo, Hispanic Studies - 2020-21: Lights, Camera, Activism!
Faculty Fellow: Mala Matacin, Psychology - 2019-20: Transversing Gender, Race, and Class
Faculty Fellow: Kristin Comeforo, Communication - 2018-19: Evidence in a Post-Truth World
Faculty Fellow: Lauren Cook, Cinema - 2017-18: The Secular and the Spiritual
Faculty Fellow: Richard Freund, Judaic Studies - 2016-17: Our Monsters, Ourselves
Faculty Fellow: Amanda Walling, English and Modern Languages - 2015-16: Remembering 9/11
Faculty Fellow: Sarah Senk, English and Modern Languages
2024-25 Student Fellows
- Lydia Balas (English and Psychology, A&S)
- Madalyn Behrmann (Psychology, A&S)
- Shaynah Castro (Politics, A&S)
- Augustus Cullivan (Clarinet, Hartt)
- Hailey D'Alessio (Art History, HAS)
- Niyah Davis (Education, Hillyer/ENHP)
- Alicia Farr (Architecture, CETA)
- Melina Haynes (Biology, A&S)
- Diego Huaman (History, A&S)
- Olivia Jascot (English, A&S)
- Rhiannon Lara (Biology, A&S)
- Ilan Sperber (General Studies, A&S)
- Finn Stigliano (Studio Art, HAS)
- Ariel Wright (Communication, A&S)
- Jiani Zuo (Illustration, HAS)