Taft Research Center, University of Cincinnati

08/21/2026

Taft is excited to introduce Erynn Masi de Casanova and Muhammad U. Faruque as the new 2026-31 Taft Distinguished Professors! Read about their backgrounds, research, and upcoming inaugural events in the UC News article below.

The University of Cincinnati's Charles Phelps Taft Research Center has named Erynn Masi de Casanova and Muhammad U. Faruque as the newest Taft Distinguished Professors. Recognized for their outstanding records of scholarly distinction, engagement across multiple fields, and continued promise, Casano...

05/19/2026

📢 Announcing campus-wide calls for Taft's new cross-disciplinary research fellowship program, co-sponsored events, and interdisciplinary seminar pitch competition, all connected to our 2026–27 theme Counter. 📣Apply by June 15 at 5PM.

During the 2026–27 academic year, the Taft Research Center will host scholars, lectures, workshops, and events that center questions of quantification, representation, opposition, and exchange. Given what the humanities and social sciences are up against, what kinds of accounting does the current moment demand? How can we ensure our knowledge and practices count? 🧮

📋 CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Counter Fellows
Faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students working on research and/or creative projects that directly engage the Center’s annual theme and would benefit from cross-disciplinary exchange are invited to apply to the 2026–27 Counter Fellows program.
This opportunity is open to scholars from across UC whose work engages both the theme and humanistic inquiry, broadly conceived. Fellows will meet once a month to discuss their projects, reflect on members varied theoretical and methodological approaches, and provide substantive feedback to one another.
See attached photo for how to apply.

📅 CALL FOR PROPOSALS: Counter Programming
Faculty, postdoctoral fellows, units, and campus and community partners are invited to nominate speakers and propose interdisciplinary workshops, performances, or other events that connect with the Center’s annual theme. Submit here: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=bC4i9cZf60iPA3PbGCA7YxkUUs9Bei1HrZlXQXqLbCFUMERBVUxBUk8zTkk3UjEyUklQUUpQWUtXTC4u&route=shorturl

📚 CALL FOR PITCHES: Counter Seminars
We are holding a campus-wide pitch competition for new interdisciplinary seminar ideas!
Faculty (tenure-track, educator, research, practice, and visiting) and postdoctoral fellows are invited to pitch new course ideas for individual and team-taught Taft Research Seminars related to the 2026–27 theme Counter.
Pitches must be for new course offerings that could run in spring 2027 (course buy-out funds will be available). We will select the most promising pitches and provide $2,500 in summer development funds per seminar. Submit here: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=bC4i9cZf60iPA3PbGCA7YxkUUs9Bei1HrZlXQXqLbCFUQTAwTVA5ME00N1RNNTZGOENUQVZTODVBSi4u&route=shorturl

Learn more about our 2026-27 annual theme Counter here: https://taft.center/Counter

03/19/2026

03/11/2026

This weather won't stop our event-filled day! ☔️ Join us TODAY for a lecture at noon and a writing workshop at 4pm with USC faculty member, writer, and editor Sarah Mesle. Learn more and register for FREE at http://taft-uc.trumba.com/

Writing, Feeling, and the History of Flow
Wednesday, March 11, 12–1:30pm
Valentine Overlook
Clifton Court Hall 5280
FREE lunch provided to all attendees!

Openings, Audience, and the Everyday - a writing workshop
Wednesday, March 11, 4–6pm
Taft Research Center

02/27/2026

Taft's Spring 2026 Keynote Lecture with Tina Campt is less than one week away! FREE and open to the public, register here: taft.center/campt

Afterimages: Grieving in Fractured Time
Thursday, March 5, 6–7:30pm
The Mercantile Library
414 Walnut St., 11th Fl.
Cincinnati, OH 45202

Grief fundamentally fractures time. It situates us simultaneously in time and out of it. It is always deeply personal, yet it is also utterly universal. We experience it as individuals, yet it is also the great equalizer that summons us to face the limits of our mortality and the relationships that sustain us. In her talk, Tina Campt will present selections from her forthcoming book, Afterimages: Grieving in Fractured Time, which tells the story of how writing to art became a survival tactic that helped her grapple with intense experiences of personal grief during a period of pervasive social grievance. Focusing on what she describes as the exemplary psychic, temporal, and sensory structure of grief, the afterimage, her talk will explore how Black contemporary artists create artworks that speak beyond what we see and give expression to the absent presences that constitute some of the most palpable manifestations of grief and mourning.

02/20/2026

📣 We are a 2026-28 Taft Postdoctoral Fellow! Scholars who received or will receive their PhD between May 2021 and June 2026 from any field or related field represented by our 15 member units in the humanities and social sciences are invited to apply.
We are particularly interested in scholars whose work can speak to our 2026–27 theme “Counter,” which explores questions of quantification, representation, and opposition, asking what kinds of accounting the current moment demands, as well as reflections and responses to what the humanities are up against.

Taft Postdoctoral Fellowship, College of Arts & Sciences

02/19/2026

Our next lecture in our Colloquium interlocutor series will take place TODAY, 3PM at Taft. Register for FREE here: 👉https://eventactions.com/eareg.aspx?ea=Rsvp&invite=g93vtxe8gm5xpxwu6hja9kpybd2exad83nb9j4m2bvt1xgz3ypv1

The "Destruction"—and "Reconquest"—of Louisville: Strikes, Militias, and Blue-Gray Reunion in Gilded Age America with Matt Stanley 🇺🇸
Thursday, February 19, 3pm | Taft Research Center
Co-sponsored with the Department of History

This talk explores how business and political elites in the aftermath of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 leveraged Civil War veteranhood to reassert control over workplaces, boost industrial development, and promote a range of pro-owner, anti-worker ideas. In Louisville, those direct efforts led to the reformation of the Louisville Legion, an upper crust militia and de facto anti-labor instrument, and culminated in the city's 1895 "Blue-Gray" encampment and the Legion's celebrated role in the Spanish-American War. Idealized as an institution in which elite Union and Confederate veterans clasped hands in the name of "public order," the Legion came to serve as a powerful symbol of North-South accommodation in a mercurial border region whose civic leaders had long prided themselves on being the nation's political as well as geographic "middle." The Legion's form and function--its social makeup and synergy with emergent business owners' associations--also underscored the central role of capital organization and anti-labor repression, in the Ohio Valley and beyond, to the broader process of sectional reconciliation.

02/16/2026

"A sonic trip that asks you to rethink the world through your ears instead of your eyes"👂 Be sure to register for The World According to Sound, happening TONIGHT at 7:30 in the Patricia Corbett Theater!
https://eventactions.com/eareg.aspx?ea=Rsvp&invite=021ktc9yjeha9797622nc135f3g6eyn91ncee98s7fskg2njpd99

02/06/2026

An interactive and immersive experience you don't want to miss!
🌎The World According to Sound🔊
Monday, February 16, 7:30pm
Patricia Corbett Theater, 290 CCM Blvd.
FREE & open to the public! Registration required:
https://www.trumba.com/eareg.aspx?ea=Rsvp&invite=021ktc9yjeha9797622nc135f3g6eyn91ncee98s7fskg2njpd99

Presented in partnership with the College of Arts & Sciences, College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), and the Institute for Research in Sensing (IRiS).

02/04/2026

Winter is for planning. Students in the Taft Seminar "History, Ecology, and Creative Practice" are developing project proposals for the Harriet Beecher Stowe House landscape. Their work will be on display in DAAP’s student gallery space the week of February 16.