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 2025–26 academic year. Fellows will give a lecture focused on their own project related to the seminar topic of “AI in Action: The Future of Humans” during the spring 2026 Humanities Lecture Series. Amy Weiss, Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies and History, will lead the Humanities Seminar for this next year.
Description of the seminar:
A 2018 Pew Research Center survey asked 979 researchers, technology innovators, developers, and entrepreneurs whether they believed artificial intelligence would enhance people’s lives by the year 2030. Sixty-three percent of the respondents shared their hopes that AI would improve most people’s lives within the next decade. A not insignificant thirty-seven percent, however, argued that humans would not be better off due to these technologies. These findings indicate both the possibilities and potential pitfalls associated with AI. Artificial intelligence, simply defined as the use of machines that perceive their environment and then harness “intelligence” to adapt to societal needs, has a broad impact across several fields of research. They include, but are not limited to economics, philosophy, education, computer science, psychology, and medicine. Examples of how we encounter AI on a daily basis include using facial recognition to unlock your phone, messaging a company’s chatbot to answer a particular question about a recent purchase, relying on Google maps or Waze to reroute your travel itinerary before you even know about traffic, and receiving curated viewing suggestions on Netflix based on the streaming service’s targeted algorithm. Although AI is often considered to be a twenty-first century innovation, it has existed as a discreet field since the 1950s. Even before this time, humans have contemplated the many uses of technology to improve their lives. By examining the historical, social, and industry-based developments of AI, we can better understand the ethical and economic implications of this technology—and make informed decisions about the future of humans.
Possible topics for proposals:
Technology and creation stories
Connections between machines and gender, machines and labor
AI and the preservation of history, AI and testimony
Reality vs. Deep Fakes and their political and/or social implications
AI, chatbots and human connections (the psycho-sociology of AI)
The use of AI in the law and policing and its implication with civil rights and justice
AI in the performing, creative and visual arts
AI and the “flattening” of language and human voices
AI Pedagogies and the Ethics of Teaching with AI
AI and medicine/(bio)tech
Robots, AI and the future of work
We are looking for 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 a focus on diversity, equity and inclusivity.
- Each Fellow will give a talk as part of the Spring 2026 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.
All faculty interested in becoming a Faculty Fellow of the Humanities Center for the 2025–26 academic year, please email a one-page proposal that describes the focus of your project as it is related to the course topic, “AI in Action: The Future of Humans,” and the material to be addressed in your spring talk, along with a short CV, to Nicholas Ealy (ealy@hartford.edu) and Amy Weiss (amweiss@hartford.edu) no later than April 11, 2025. If you have questions, please email Nicholas Ealy, Humanities Center director.
See the attached flyer for complete details.