The Humanities Center at the University of Hartford is accepting applications for Student Fellows for next year’s honors seminar. Students with a minimum of a 3.0 grade point average who will be sophomores, juniors, or seniors in the 2026-2027 academic year are eligible to participate in the Humanities Center as Student Fellows.
As a Fellow, you attend a year-long honors seminar on the yearly theme. Rachel Walker, Associate Professor of History, will lead the Humanities Center Seminar for this next year. She has selected the theme of “Gender Trouble” for the seminar. Here, you will get to know some of the brightest students at the University of Hartford. You will also attend lectures by both university faculty who are doing research on this theme and visiting speakers. Here is a description of the idea behind the seminar:
Gender shapes our most intimate decisions: who we love, what we wear, and how we interact with others. It is fundamental to how we experience the world and conceptualize our identities. Yet it’s also hard to define. Some Americans contend that there are just two sexes—male and female—and think that 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 interrogate 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 it all matter for how we live our lives?
The Humanities Center is seeking student fellows who care about these questions and who are eager to figure out why gender has become such a lightning rod in modern society and politics. Applicants may come from majors in a wide variety of disciplines across the arts, humanities, sciences, and/or STEM. The best proposals will discuss the applicants’ personal or academic interest in the study of sex, gender, and sexuality.
In the fall semester, students will first delve into scholarly literature on gender with the goal of keeping an open mind, taking authors at their words, and critically engaging with the theories. Students will then study the history of gender in the Americas, from the colonial era to the present. Throughout the semester, they will work on a more formal piece of writing that examines how notions of gender have developed over time. In the spring semester, along with engaging with guest lectures, students will do a weekly “Current Event” presentation. By the end of the semester, students will have completed a creative project dealing with a topic covered in the seminar.
Students who are selected for this seminar are awarded a fellowship and will receive a stipend (in March of 2027) of at least $500. Selected students will also take the seminar for a total of six credits, three in the fall term and three in the spring term. The courses are listed as HON 389 in the fall 2026 schedule and HON 390 in the spring 2027 schedule. The class meets both semesters on Monday evenings, 5 p.m.–7:20 p.m., and student fellows must take both semesters. If you know that you are not able to take both semesters, please do not apply. HON 389 will count as either a UISS or UISC class — please do not email asking if it will count for something else.
To apply, send a document as an attachment via email by Friday, March 27, to Dr. Rachel Walker (racwalker@hartford.edu) and to me (Dr. Nicholas Ealy, Humanities Center Director at ealy@hartford.edu) that includes the following information. (Put all this information in the email attachment. Do not split it between the body of the email and the attachment.)
- your name
- your major and minor (if you have one)
- your grade point average
- your UHart e-mail address
- your student ID number
- an explanation of why you want to participate in the Seminar (1 page maximum)
Your attachment should have your name as the name of the file – last name and first name (example: EalyNicholas.docx or EalyNicholas.pdf).
You will be notified of acceptance by Friday, April 3, along with instructions for registration. If you have any questions about the application process, please contact me at ealy@hartford.edu. In the meantime, I recommend you register for four classes for fall 2026, as this would be a fifth class for you.