Disability Studies

Students and faculty alike have expressed strong interest in increased support of research and collaboration around disability studies. In this context, Cogut Institute postdoctoral fellow Emily Lim Rogers and Theatre Arts and Performance Studies professor Leon Hilton piloted the Disability Studies Working Group, a network for connecting disability scholars at Brown and offering programming to the wider community. The group convened or cosponsored seven public events, as well as a graduate student reading group.

Emily Lim Rogers also guest-hosted “Disability Narratives and Research Creation,” the most recent episode of the “Meeting Street” podcast, featuring anthropologist Megan Moodie exploring the intersection of disability studies and creative practice.

The Fellows Seminar serves as an incubator for some of the most exciting humanities research at Brown. It brings together scholars across disciplines and stages of career — from undergraduates to faculty — to share and workshop in-progress research and to explore each other’s ideas collaboratively. This practice not only results in highly tested thinking and writing but helps scholars forge connections beyond their home departments.

Hear this year’s undergraduate fellows share their thoughts on how the seminar enhanced their study at Brown and helped prepare them for the next phases of their educational and professional growth.

Congratulations to the five undergraduate fellows, who graduated with honors and earned awards in comparative literature, international and public affairs, literary criticism, sociology, and South Asian studies.

All four outgoing postdoctoral fellows, who were with us since fall 2021, secured teaching positions at top-tier universities:

• Veronica Fitzpatrick — Adjunct Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University
• Adrián Emmanuel Hernández-Acosta — Assistant Professor of Religion and Literature at the Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School at Yale University
• Mariah Min — Assistant Professor of English at Brown University
• Emily Lim Rogers — Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University

Meet the Fellows

Greg and Julie Flynn Cogut Institute Speaker Series

The institute’s flagship speaker series brought to campus three high-profile speakers with broad, timely relevance to interdisciplinary research and cultural dialogue. Amy Goodman, executive producer of the Democracy Now! independent news program, spoke about the critical importance of independent news media to the future of democracy. Acclaimed poet and novelist Ocean Vuong reflected on the challenges currently faced by Asian American and LGBTQIA+ creators. And Meghan O’Gieblyn, an essayist and Wired columnist, discussed the emergent field of AI writing and how it calls into question the status of our own human thinking. Speakers also offered special seminars open to undergraduates from all disciplines.

Explore Cogut event series, centers, and initiatives

The courses offered by the institute provide students with training in the disciplinary and collaborative research methodologies essential to humanities practice in the world today. During the 2022–23 academic year, courses covered topics such as histories of violence, climate crisis, medieval conceptions of gender, and disability in the context of capitalism.

2022–23 Course Catalog

Preparing graduate students for professional life

The annual Project Development Workshop serves as the capstone seminar for the Doctoral Certificate in Collaborative Humanities. Students across disciplines pursue research in a dynamic community environment that not only enriches their research but allows them to experiment with important professional skills such as writing introductions for each other’s work and giving conference presentations. In the spring 2023 workshop, students presented on topics in the fields of American studies, comparative literature, English, French and Francophone studies, modern culture and media, music, and theatre arts and performance studies.

Brown University is a world leader in humanities research, producing some of the most potent voices on our historical and cultural heritage. Scholars at Brown across all disciplines continually demonstrate that humanities methods and perspectives remain essential to research and practice that matter to broad audiences and offer viable solutions for our increasingly complicated world.

You can help the Cogut Institute advance the research and teaching of humanities scholars at Brown. A gift in support of these priorities will contribute to growing the humanities faculty, extending financial support to scholars, and expanding our public programming:

• Humanities Initiative Professorships
• Interdisciplinary initiatives, such as Environmental Humanities at Brown and Disability Studies
• Our essential Director’s Innovation Fund

To learn more about how your gift will make an impact, please contact Sarah Santos, Director of Development for Academic Initiatives, at sarah_santos@brown.edu or (401) 863-1894.

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