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Seeking Proposals From Faculty to Lead Humanities Center's Honors Seminar

September 06, 2020
Submitted By: Bryan Sinche

Full-time faculty from all colleges of the University are invited to submit a course proposal to lead the Humanities Center’s Honors Seminar in the academic year 2021-2022.

The proposal should outline a broad, interdisciplinary theme that will attract students from across the University. Recent themes have included: “Utopia/Dystopia,” “Complexity,” “Remembering 9/11,” “Our Monsters, Ourselves,” “The Secular and the Spiritual,” “Evidence in a Post-Truth World,” “Transversing Gender, Race and Class,” and, this year, “Lights, Camera, Activism!” Past seminar leaders have found that working with the University’s best students and with colleagues and visiting lecturers who share their interests is intellectually rewarding. 

Here’s how the seminar works and what one needs to do to submit a proposal:

• The seminar leader is the instructor for two honors courses on a particular theme, HON 389 in the fall and HON 390 in the spring. The seminar meets each semester on Tuesday evenings from 7:30 p.m.-10 p.m. (5 p.m.-7:20 p.m. is most likely an option as well) and is taught to student fellows, fifteen excellent students from across the University. Students must apply to be fellows and must take the seminar both semesters. In addition, three or four faculty fellows, who are working on research projects related to the Center’s theme, are chosen to give lectures in the spring and to contribute in other ways as agreed upon with the seminar leader.

• The leader works with the director to plan a public lecture series in the spring that supplements the course’s interdisciplinary focus. Each faculty fellow presents one of the spring lectures. The seminar leader also invites outside speakers to participate in the spring lecture series. 

• The seminar leader receives a stipend of $1,500 for planning the course.

• Please submit your proposal to Bryan Sinche, Director (sinche@hartford.edu) by Friday, November 1, 2020. Include a description of the proposed seminar theme, topics the seminar would address, possible readings, a brief discussion of the format you would use, and a brief CV. If you have any questions or would like to see copies of past proposals, please send an inquiry to the director.

• Remember that the seminar should emphasize the humanities but also approach the proposed topic from multiple disciplines, including those outside the humanities. The opportunity is open to all full-time faculty from all colleges of the University.