Humanities Center Seeks Faculty Fellows for 2026–27

The Humanities Center of the University of Hartford requests applications from full-time faculty across the institution who are interested in becoming one of the Faculty Fellows of the Humanities Center for the 2026–27 academic year. Fellows will give a lecture focused on their own project related to the seminar topic of “Gender Trouble: Thinking Beyond the Binary” during the spring 2027 Humanities Lecture Series. Rachel Walker, Associate Professor of History, will lead the Humanities Seminar for this next year.

Here is a description of the topic:

Gender has become a lightning rod in modern society and politics. Some Americans contend that there are just two sexes—male and female—and think society should be organized around a gender binary. Others have argued for a more flexible notion of identity, viewing gender as a social construct, rather than a fixed bodily reality. The goal of this seminar is to critically engage with these competing ideas. In a world where people disagree about the facts, how should we make sense of gender? What is gender, anyway? And how does it relate to sex? How do societies decide what’s “normal” and what’s “deviant”? What happens when people buck conventions or assert alternative identities? Most importantly, why does gender matter for how we live our lives?

The Humanities Center is seeking Faculty Fellows who can contribute to this discussion from a wide array of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives. We welcome proposals from faculty in art, art history, architecture, music and the performing arts, communication, health professions, cinema, psychology, economics and business, history, sociology and criminal justice, philosophy, literature and rhetoric, politics, education, and STEM.

The advantages and responsibilities of being a Faculty Fellow include the following:

• Faculty Fellows will be working on a scholarly or pedagogical project in a context that will offer encouragement and a testing site for the development of their ideas. Successful applicants will address how the research produced during the fellowship will be disseminated beyond the Humanities Center (a publication, conference presentation, curricular development, etc.). We encourage proposals with an inclusive perspective.
• Each Fellow will give a talk as part of the Spring 2027 series of lectures associated with that year’s theme. The lecture will give each Fellow an opportunity to present their work on the project. Lectures will be Monday evenings at 5 p.m.
• Fellows receive a stipend of $1,500 to enable them to read, write, do research and prepare their spring lecture.
• Fellows are encouraged to attend the Monday evening talks by other fellows during the spring lecture series.