Tanner Humanities Center

The British Studies Faculty Research Interest Group has been active for about 20 years—and continues to hum along happily! We now have a distribution list of over 30 faculty members across several departments and four local universities.

We typically meet two or three times each semester to hear presentations from members (and occasionally from guest speakers) on any aspect of British Studies. These interdisciplinary sessions typically take place on a Friday morning (with refreshments)--and are always lively, collegial, and well-attended. Most frequently, the presenter is testing out a draft of an in-progress article, chapter, or conference paper; thus, the Q&A and discussion afterwards often prove particularly helpful.

Vincent Cheng and Chris Jones

We are a broadly interdisciplinary group who meet monthly to talk about contemporary novels in translation from MENA/SWANA. Some of us are scholars of the region, some scholars of literature more generally, some just dedicated readers of good books. Our discussions are open-ended, thoughtful and fun. We wear our politics and aesthetics lightly and rarely convince each other of our readings.

Annie Greene and Scott Black

The Environmental Humanities Research Interest Group offers a space for faculty to read and discuss scholarly, creative nonfiction, and fiction works that focus on the intersections and tensions between nature/culture, humans/environments, and environmentalism/environmental justice. Some recent books include Epic of the Earth, Undrowned, North Woods, Orbital, and Intersectional Environmentalist. The EH RIG is open to all faculty interested in or curious about the interdisciplinary field of environmental humanities. The group sometimes hosts joint meetings with other RIGs or reading groups.

Danielle Endres, Juliana Chow, and Jessica DiCarlo

This interdisciplinary reading group will focus on two intertwined problems: How do we conceptualize “history”? And how do we historicize concepts? These two issues raise profound methodological and philosophical problems for almost all humanistic disciplines and many of the social sciences, and they have generated an influential (though often under-read) body of literature that spans historiography, philosophy, and literary studies. This RIG will read through some of the seminal works in this literature (broadly conceived) and will bring together scholars in a wide range of disciplines.

Keywords: History, History of Science, History of Religions, Critical Theory, History of Philosophy, Conceptual History, Intellectual History, historiographical methodology, comparative temporalities

Max Brandstadt

This interdisciplinary writing workshop aspires to give humanities faculty the opportunity to get feedback on works in progress from their colleagues in different departments. By bringing together an interdisciplinary group, we hope for this workshop to offer scholars the rare chance to see how their work resonates with non-specialists. Please come if you are interested in workshopping diverse kinds of writing (journal articles, conference papers, public talks, creative works) or participating in discussions.

Jake Nelson and Christopher Miller

The Languages for the Professions RIG explores theory, methodology, and classroom practices for teaching world languages for specific professional and disciplinary purposes.

Natalya Kuznetsova, Anne Lair, and Anna Hodgson

A reading and discussion group for faculty interested in popular and/or literary romance. We’ll read both contemporary and historical romances from around the world, with texts ranging from the 7th century Arabian folk tale, Layla and Manjun, to Jane Austen. We will also (and perhaps especially) read works by popular romance authors like Georgette Heyer, Daphne du Maurier, Beverly Jenkins, and Emily Henry. Among other things, we’ll dip our toes into Romantasy, gothic romance, Regency romance, the HEA, and dark romance. One of the central goals of this group will be to take seriously this chronically overlooked and often maligned genre, and to challenge the widely accepted assumption that it is somehow either untheorizable or otherwise “beneath” critique.

Sam Tett