Congratulations to Rachel Walker, Associate Professor of History (A&S), who has been chosen to lead the Humanities Seminar with the topic “Gender Trouble” for the 2026–27 academic year!
In Professor Walker’s seminar, students will study concepts of gender in the ancient world, early-modern Europe, colonial North America and the contemporary United States. Topics of study and discussion will be how Americans in the past developed and enforced gender roles related to power, “Two Spirit” identities in Indigenous nations, “female husbands” in early America, and modern gender activists. The goal of the class will be to engage critically with a few main questions: What is gender, anyway? How does it relate to sex? How do societies decide what is “normal” and what is “deviant”? What happens when people buck conventions? And, most importantly, why does it all matter?
The Humanities Seminar is a two-semester course (HON 389 and 390) offered every year through the Humanities Center. The fall semester is a seminar-style course while the spring is a series of talks on that year’s topic that also serves as the Humanities Center’s Spring Lecture Series. The seminar is open to high-achieving undergraduate students who are chosen from a pool of applicants and receive a scholarship through the center as Humanities Student Fellows. UHart faculty are encouraged to apply to be Humanities Faculty Fellows, have their research supported, and speak in the Spring Lecture Series. Calls for both student and faculty fellows will go out in Spring 2026.
The Humanities Center aims to provide greater visibility for the humanities at the University of Hartford and to furnish venues for interdisciplinary exchanges across the humanities and the arts, sciences, technology, media, music, psychology, film, philosophy, history, and literature. For more information, contact Nicholas Ealy, center director, at ealy@hartford.edu, or visit our webpage.