Humanities Seminar
The Humanities Research Seminar is an academic yearlong seminar on an interdisciplinary theme, coordinated by a Bentley faculty fellow aiming to cultivate research by bringing together eminent scholars from Bentley, across the Greater Boston area, and beyond.
CALL FOR PROPOSALS: Open until March 1, 2027
Humanities Research Seminar
2027- 2028 Special focus: Digital scholarship
Got BIG Research Ideas?
Do you want to:
- develop a research project with colleagues from different disciplinary perspectives?
- explore how digital methods, technologies, data, or media can open new questions?
- connect with faculty from across Bentley University and the greater Boston academic community?
This year (2027–2028,) The Valente Center invites proposals for a Digital Humanities* focused Research Seminar.
Purpose
With continued funding from a National Endowment for the Humanities challenge grant, the Valente Center for Arts & Sciences seeks proposals for a yearlong interdisciplinary research seminar.
A full-time Bentley faculty member will serve as the organizing faculty member, developing an interdisciplinary theme that brings together faculty around a significant research matter or set of related questions. The seminar should produce sustained intellectual collaboration and create opportunities for further research and publications.
The seminar brings together participating faculty from Bentley and, where appropriate, colleges and universities in the greater Boston area. Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary proposals are encouraged.
However, a proposal does not need to originate in a conventional humanities discipline: Social sciences and interdisciplinary fields of inquiry may also be the foundation of a proposal. This year, a proposal should reflect a link between digital or computational methods and questions concerning people, organizations, societies, cultures, values, histories, or other forms of human expression and knowledge. In a strong proposal the digital or computational dimension is integral to the intellectual questions or methodology, rather than simply a tool for presenting otherwise conventional research.
Organizing Faculty Fellow's Responsibilities
- develop and refine the seminar's central interdisciplinary research theme;
- articulate how the seminar contributes to Digital Humanities and/or Digital Scholarship;
- identify questions sufficiently broad to attract faculty from multiple disciplines while sufficiently focused to generate meaningful scholarly research;
- recruit participating scholars from Bentley and, where appropriate, other institutions;
- invite, review, and select participating scholars;
- develop a schedule of seminar meetings, research activities, workshops, speakers, and other intellectual programming;
- lead the seminar throughout AY 2027–2028;
- encourage research collaborations among participating faculty;
- work with the Valente Center team on seminar logistics and programming; and
- report periodically on the seminar's activities and scholarly progress.
Eligibility and Compensation
All full-time Bentley faculty members with an established research record and relevant leadership experience are eligible to apply.
The Organizing Faculty Member receives a stipend $6000 for AY 2027–2028 - $3000 per semester - and additionally $1000 upon submission of a possible publication. When two faculty members jointly take the lead, the $6000 stipend is evenly split. Yet, the additionally $1000 stipend upon submission of a possible publication applies to each.
Participants will receive $1000 per semester, and additionally $1000 upon submission of a possible publication.
Application Process and Deadline
Applicants submit a proposal addressing:
- Seminar theme and intellectual rationale
Describe the proposed topic, central research questions, and its significance. - Digital Humanities/Digital Scholarship dimension
Explain how digital materials, methods, technologies, environments, or critical questions are integral to the proposed seminar. - Interdisciplinary potential
Identify the fields or perspectives that could contribute to the seminar and explain how their interaction would advance the research. - Faculty participation
Describe the potential for participation by Bentley faculty and, where appropriate, scholars from other institutions. - Potential outcomes
Identify anticipated scholarly or intellectual outcomes. These may include traditional publications as well as digital projects, datasets, archives, exhibits, visualizations, public-facing scholarship, teaching resources, or other appropriate outputs. - Qualifications
Briefly describe the applicant's relevant research, leadership, collaborative, and student-mentoring experience.
Applicants also submit an abbreviated CV highlighting relevant research, leadership, and, if applicable, interdisciplinary collaboration, as well as any other relevant experience.
Proposal deadline: Match 1, 2027
For questions concerning the seminar, possible topics, and to submit a proposal, please contact Johannes (Hans) Eijmberts, Director of the Valente Center, at jeijmberts@bentley.edu.
The decision will be shared, in short time, with those who have submitted proposals.
*The Valente Center uses a broad definition of Digital Humanities. It refers to scholarship that combines humanities questions, concepts, and methods with digital technologies or computational approaches. This can include using digital methods to investigate traditional humanistic questions as well as bringing humanistic interpretation and critique to digital technologies themselves (Gold).
Gold, M. K., ed. Debates in the Digital Humanities. University of Minnesota Press. DOI: 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677948.001.0001.
2027- 2028 Seminar
Past Seminars
2025 - 2026 Beyond the Political Football: Discussing and Addressing Issues in Immigration and Latino/e Politics
Maricruz Osorio, (GLS)
Increasingly, Americans are dissatisfied with immigration, with 43% of Americans saying they are very dissatisfied with the state of immigration today1, yet 68% of Americans say that immigration is a good thing for the country. Most people, across the political divide, agree that immigration reform is necessary and that the current system does not work. However, what to do and how to move forward continues to elude the nation. This is in large part because the issue of immigration cuts across multiple dimensions. It is at the same time, a social and economic issue. Social scientists across disciplines have studied immigration in silos, however, immigration is a transdisciplinary issue. This seminar brings individuals from across disciplines together that focus on immigration in the United States. The purpose in bringing experts on immigration and citizenship is to create a holistic understanding of immigration. The intended deliverable will be an edited volume. If an edited book volume does not work out, an effort to submitting a special journal feature will be made.
2023- 2024 Social Identities and Media
Identity, or the act of being and existing in social spaces, can profoundly affect how an individual builds relationships, self-reflects, and engages in social spaces. One area often aligned with identities is media, which has become foundational in our evolving global society. As such, understanding the importance of access and comfort with media is imperative (Bawden, 2008; Milenkova & Lendzhova, 2021). As one example of engagement, media literacies recognize individuals' potential to participate in civic and political life and may decrease the knowledge gap (Martens & Hobbs, 2015). To illustrate, research has drawn attention to audiences’ critical assessment (i.e., literacy) of news and digital media as a means to gather vital information during turmoil or hardship (Nguyen et al., 2020), maintain relationships and well-being (Stamps et al., 2021), and empower vulnerable communities (Beaunoyer et al., 2020).
The dependence on media has increased (Dwivedi et al., 2021; Vukanovic, 2009). Nevertheless, as of 2020, only 58.4% of the global community has access to digital media, 54.6% has access to mobile devices, such as smartphones and digital tablets, and a quarter of the world’s population remains digital illiterate, thus lacking the skills to recognize misinformation or possess the necessary skills to fully use digital platforms (Mamedova & Pawlowski, 2018; Statista, 2021). Scholars have predicted that by 2030, 90% of the world’s population will need media literacy skills to navigate a diverse and ever-changing media landscape (Morgan, 2021). Understanding the gaps in access and potential issues with media use, and bridging the divide among communities, requires a deep comprehension of media and its relationship to diverse audiences.
2022- 2023 Loneliness: The Mental Health Crisis of Our Time?
Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, our time was often described as the age of loneliness. Numerous studies argued that people, at least in the Western world, felt lonelier than ever before; the news were awash with reports of a "loneliness epidemic". Famously, the UK government in 2018 appointed a "Minister for Loneliness". Since then, the social isolation brought about by the pandemic has only increased people's sense of loneliness. Lockdowns that brought solitary confinement, online forms of work and socializing, and obligatory masks that conceal facial expressions all have contributed to an apparently pervasive sense of feeling alone. This experience is linked to increases in not only mental health problems but also heart disease and even death.
2021-2022 Seminar I: Taking Action on the Climate Crisis: Just & Equitable Solutions
The theme of the first 2021-2022 seminar is “Taking Action on the Climate Crisis: Just & Equitable Solutions.” The world needs stronger AND more equitable climate action through solutions that address inequities and work toward a more just world. Doing so requires an interdisciplinary and global understanding of the problem and the potential solutions. This seminar will invite scholars to share their work, with the goal that scholars may be able to produce a publishable paper in a journal relevant to their fields, a chapter in a book, or a grant application. It will seek to generate constructive discussions and opportunities to learn from other disciplines. It will connect scholars across fields so that we might explore methods, connections and debates around what does and does not increase equity and mitigate climate change.
The Humanities Research Seminar is made possible by a Challenge Grant awarded to Bentley University by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2011. The co-coordinators for this seminar are Laurel Steinfield, Associate Professor in the Marketing Department and Zana Cranmer, Assistant Professor in the Department of Natural and Applied Sciences.
2021-2022 Seminar II: From Scapegoats to Citizens: This Era of Black Activism
Starting in 2005, Florida and then dozens of other states passed so-called "Stand Your Ground" laws, which enabled by and large white civilians to kill people of color without legal consequences. Then in 2012, Trayvon Martin was shot dead by George Zimmerman in Florida, who invoked a Stand Your Ground defense and won acquittal on the murder charge. The resulting protests and ongoing activism against both civilian and police murders of Black people constituted the Black Lives Matter movement.
In 2006 Tarana Burke founded the "Me Too" movement, to enable women and girls to come forward and talk about their experiences of sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape. The movement went viral on social media in 2017 and continues to progress. Benjamin Chavis, Jr. initiated the movement against environmental racism in 1982, a movement which has begun to gain greater traction in the social media era. April Reign in 2015 took on the entertainment industry with the #OscarsSoWhite campaign. Lastly, high school and college students have used social media to develop #Black@ movements, to address racism on their campuses.
All these movements were created by Black Americans. They have developed widespread impacts, broad and diverse support, and continue to reveal both active and passive complicity with racist and sexist agendas in politics, policing, environmental protection, education and business, to name but a few. We believe this is a moment when the Valente Center Research Seminar would be well served to focus on how these movements, building upon but also building beyond the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s, are working to transform the lives of Black Americans as well as US society as a whole. It is a moment to reflect upon and engage in research on the goals, the means, the leaders, the supporters, and the outcomes of this period of activism. It is also critical to engage in research on various kinds of backlash these movements have faced, including legal, social, criminal and mediated responses, and their subsequent actions as well.
The coordinators for the second seminar is Mary Marcel, Associate Prof. Experience Design and Kiana Pierre-Louis, Sr. Law Lecturer, Law and Taxation Department.
2020 - 2021 Seminar: Risk Communication in Times of Crisis
The Jeanne and Dan Valente Center for the Arts and Sciences at Bentley University invites faculty working on issues around evidence, evaluation or impact to apply to become participating Fellows in Bentley University's year-long Humanities Research Seminar. The seminar will hold once-a-month meetings on the third Thursday of the month from 3-5 PM from September 2020 through April 2021. The seminar will take place over Zoom in the Fall semester with a potential hybrid format in 2021 if possible.
The theme of the 2020-2021 seminar is "Risk Communication in Times of Crisis." Risk communication is broadly defined as "the real-time exchange of real-time information, advice and opinions between experts and people facing threats to their health, economic or social well-being."(1) In times of crisis, effective risk communication is often a matter of life and death. The field of risk communication is radically interdisciplinary and the proposed Humanities Research Seminar will explore the myriad cultural, economic, political, and social dynamics of risk communication before, during, and after a crisis.
The Humanities Research Seminar is made possible by a Challenge Grant awarded to Bentley University by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2011. The co-coordinators for this year's seminar are Rob DeLeo, Associate Professor in the Global Studies Department and Danielle Hartigan, Associate Professor in the Department of Natural and Applied Sciences. Please contact Rob and Danielle with any questions.
[1] World Health Organization (WHO). 2012. “Risk Communication.” Available at: https://www.who.int/risk-communication/background/en/.
Valente Center Humanities Research Seminar Series 2018-2019
“Intersectionality at the Intersect of Disciplines”
This theme is broadly construed as the goal of this seminar and is for scholars to share and learn about different disciplinary perspectives and methodological tools used to examine intersecting oppressions.
As per Davis (2008, 68), internationality can be conceptualized as “the interaction [among] categories of difference in individual lives, social practices, institutional arrangements, and cultural ideologies and the outcomes of these interactions in terms of power.” Originating from black feminist scholarship, “intersectionality” has enabled scholars, activists, businesses, and policy makers to better understand and address injustices that occur for individuals and groups from overlapping identity categories, whether race, gender, class, sexual orientation, nationality, etc.
This seminar invites fellows to explore topics related to a field of interest that either have or could benefit from an intersectional lens. This may include political, educational, or environmental processes/policies that result in the exclusion or disadvantage of certain groups, corporate/social entrepreneurial interventions that seek to address and empower disadvantaged groups, representations or sociocultural practices that perpetuate marginalization or misrecognitions, the sociocultural or psychological aspects involved in the interaction of privileges and oppressions, among many other possibilities.
This seminar was organized by Laurel Steinfield, assistant professor of Marketing. The Humanities Seminar is proudly organized by the Valente Center with the support of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Valente Center Humanities Research Seminar Series 2017-2018
"A Transdisciplinary Investigation of Evidence and Its Use"
Evidence is a cornerstone of academic research and has application across multiple, if not most, disciplines. Additionally, governments, corporations, NGOs and other organizations harness evidence to identify emerging trends, inform decision-making, and, ultimately, justify actions. Every academic discipline has its own definition and standard of evidence. From law to political science, history to math, geography to geology, scholars universally recognize the importance of evidence but often rely on widely different methodologies for acquiring, analyzing and disseminating evidence and other “empirical” metrics. Even within disciplines scholars frequently quarrel over the value of qualitative versus quantitative techniques, debates that ultimately center on the relative value of different types of evidence—ranging from contextual accounts of specific events to robust statistical databases. Indeed, many academic conferences devote entire sections or, at the very least, a handful of subset panels to addressing these pressing methodological questions.
The Humanities Seminar was proudly organized by the Valente Center with the support of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The organizing faculty fellow for the 2017-18 Valente Humanities Seminar is Sean McDonald, Associate Professor of Global Studies.
Valente Center Humanities Research Seminar Series 2015-2016
“Environmental Justice: Global to Local Contexts”
This theme is broadly construed, and we are eager to bring participants to the table who work on a wide range of issues related to differential health and environmental burdens caused by poverty and racial, ethnic, gender, or class discrimination. We anticipate that topics might include patterns of toxic pollution, food insecurity, differential public health outcomes, impacts of climate precarity (at any scale), and the lack of representation of minority communities and diverse participants in environmental politics and environmental movements, among many other possibilities. The convener for this year’s seminar is Joni Seager, Professor and Chair, Global Studies, Bentley University.