The Humanities Seminar is a research and mentorship program within the Humanities Institute (HI) for faculty and students conducting research in the humanities. The program envisions the Humanities Seminar as the leading edge of humanities research and mentorship at Fairfield University, with significant scholarly outcomes in both faculty and student scholarship in the humanities.

Six faculty fellows and seven student fellows have been chosen to participate by a selection committee, and will work under the direction of Kris Sealey, PhD, professor of philosophy and the associate director of the HI.

“The commitment of the HI Seminar centers on faculty and student fellows coming together as co-intellectuals,” said Dr. Sealey. “In that regard, our work is ‘distinctly Fairfield’ in its close mentorship of students, and its expectation for students and faculty to work together as co-collaborators.”

Fellows work in an intellectual community on individual research projects, while engaging one another in conversations about methods, procedures, theoretical considerations, and other topics. In both fall and spring, student fellows join faculty fellows in regular meetings to discuss their research-in-progress.

Of the current research, Dr. Sealey said that there are “incredible projects” students and faculty are working on together. She explained that in one, Claudia Calhoun, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts, is working on research that considers “how the disruptions in the postwar creative industries produce new narratives about race, citizenship, and belonging.”

Specifically, Dr. Calhoun’s project aims to show how film and television narratives sought to shift audiences’ emotional terrain during this postwar era. She will be working with and mentoring student fellow, Eula Valdez ’22.

Created by an NEH Challenge grant in 1983, the Humanities Institute in the College of Arts and Sciences is an endowed initiative established to "ensure that the humanities will flourish at the heart of a Fairfield University education." Since its inception, the endowment has funded hundreds of lectures, events, film series, workshops, and seminars.

Faculty Fellows 

The Humanities Seminar is a two-year commitment for faculty fellows. For each of the two academic years that they participate, faculty fellows receive a one-course reduction.

Congratulations to 2021-2023 Faculty Fellows for their investiture in their two-year seminar membership:

• Dr. Annemarie Iddins, Assistant Professor, Communication 
• Dr. Claudia Calhoun, Assistant Professor, Visual and Performing Arts
• Dr. Jerelyn Johnson, Associate Professor, Modern Languages and Literatures
• Dr. Lydia Willsky-Ciollo, Associate Professor, Religious Studies
• Dr. Elizabeth Petrino, Professor, English, and Director of Magis Core
• Dr. Silvia Marsans-Sakly  Assistant Professor, History

Student Fellows 

The Humanities Seminar is a one-year commitment for student fellows. Student fellows receive three credits and individual mentoring by a faculty fellow while completing an advanced research project in English, history, modern languages and literatures, philosophy, religious studies, visual and performing arts, or an interdisciplinary field with a substantive humanities component.

Student fellowships are recommended for humanities majors and minors, but are open to all exceptional students proposing advanced humanities research.  

Congratulations to 2021-2022 Student Fellows for their investiture in their one-year seminar membership:

• Eula Valdez ’22
• Amber Aslaigh ’22
• Tracy Ferguson ’22
• Jack Martorano ’23
• Hannah Flanagan ’22
• Kelly-Ann McAlice ’22
• Sydney Youd ’23

Learn more about the Humanities Institute.