Center for the Humanities

Faculty Fellows

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  CLAIRE GRACE

  Assistant Professor of Art History

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  Claire Grace is an art historian specializing in art from the 1960s to the present, primarily in U.S. contexts, and with a particular focus on intersections between aesthetic practices and social and political criticism. She is completing a monograph on the 1980s work of Group Material and has published several essays on this and other topics.

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  CHRISTIAN HOGENDORN

  Associate Professor of Economics

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  Christian Hogendorn studies the economics of infrastructure industries, especially telecommunications and the Internet. I teach classes in industrial organization, the economics of technology, and microeconomic theory.

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  JUSTINE QUIJADA

  Assistant Professor of Religion

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  Justine Quijada specializes in ritual studies, post-Soviet religious practices, nationality politics and comparative secularisms in Siberia and does fieldwork with urban shamans in Ulan-Ude, Buryatia. 

Andrew W. Mellon Fellows

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  LARRY MCGRATH

  Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow

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  Larry S. McGrath's research and teaching address the history of modern Europe and the Atlantic world. He received his PhD in Intellectual History from the Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins University. His publications explore the cultural resonances of religion, philosophy, nationalism, and the human sciences from the late eighteenth century to the present. Larry is currently transforming his doctoral dissertation into a book, Making Spirit Matter: Neurology, Psychology, and Selfhood in Modern France. When he’s not backpacking or playing ultimate frisbee, Larry also spends his time working on two projects: the first examines intellectual ambassadors in international relations around World War I; the second uncovers the history of brain education in France, Germany, and America. 

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  JEANETTE SAMYN

  Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow

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  Jeanette Samyn received her B.A. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and her Ph.D. in English from Indiana University. Her teaching and research investigate the worldviews projected by nineteenth-century literature and science. Currently, she is turning her doctoral dissertation into a book, In Praise of the Parasite: Asymmetrical Relations in the British Empire, which explains how complex asymmetrical relations were embedded into turn-of-the-century notions of "community" and "environment" through the figure of the parasite. She is also interested in contemporary film and politics, and has written on these subjects for publications such as n+1, The New Inquiry, Dossier, and The American Reader.

Visiting Fellows

• Hassan Almohammed

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  Hassan Almohammed holds a PhD in French contemporary poetry from the Université Blasie Pascal where he wrote his dissertation, La prémonition de la mort chez les "poets météores" français du XXème siècle (1945-1992), on the existential and poetic relationship surrounding the premonition of death. After completing his studies he held a post at the University of Aleppo, Syria. More recently he has been teaching in France. Professor Almohammed has five articles published in academic journals, has attended and presented at numerous conferences in his field in Syria and France, and was invited to give a guest lecture on poetry at the University of Manoubai, Tunisia. Over the last several years, Professor Almohammad has also served as an interpreter for various French journalists and media-related videos and has translated poetry collections into French and Arabic."

  His publications include: "About Tamtam", in Poetologie du témoignage, Éditions Publisud (2014) and "Olivier Larronde ou la marche à la mort," Frontières Vol. 19. p. 41-46, Spring 2007.

  Aside from his expertise in, and passion for, literature, Professor Almohammed holds an MA in the theories and practices of language and fine arts from the EHESS, Paris where he wrote his thesis on the photomontage and the fabrication of analogical and digital photography.

  In addition, Hassan is a poet and skilled oudist who regularly participates in poetry events and readings.

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  Steven Wilf

  University of Connecticut, Anthony J. Smits Professor of Global Commerce & Director of the Intellectual Property & Information Governance Program

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  A scholar whose research focuses on intellectual property law and legal history, Steven Wilf is the author of The Law Before the Law (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), Law’s Imagined Republic: Popular Politics and Criminal Justice in Revolutionary America (Cambridge University Press, 2010), and numerous articles. He founded the Law School’s Intellectual Property Program and served as Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development from 2010-2013. Professor Wilf received both his Ph.D. in history from Yale University and his law degree from Yale Law School in 1995. Prior to joining the faculty, he clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and was the Samuel I. Golieb Fellow in Legal History at NYU Law School.

  Professor Wilf teaches Criminal Law, Development of the Regulatory State, Intellectual Property Law, and a variety of seminars on the regulation of knowledge. He has been a visiting professor at Hebrew University, Jerusalem and DAAD guest professor at the Freie Universität, Berlin. His research fellowships include a fellowship in Comparative Legal History at the University of Chicago and a Lemelson Fellowship for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian Institution. In 2010-2011, he was the Microsoft Fellow in Law, Property, and the Economic Organization of Society at Princeton University's Program in Law and Public Affairs (LAPA). During the academic year 2013-2014, Professor Wilf was appointed Elizabeth S. and Richard M. Cashin Fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies. In 2016, he served as Visiting Professor at Yale Law School.  This year he is the Abraham L. Kaminstein Scholar in Residence at the United States Copyright Office and a participating fellow at the Wesleyan University Center for the Humanities Intellectual Property/Intellectual Piracy research project.  Professor Wilf is currently completing a history of intellectual property law for Cambridge University Press.

Student Fellows

• May Treuhaft Ali

• Ian Foster

• Haenah Kwon

• Claire Marshall