University Seminars

About

Dartmouth's University Seminars bring together faculty members from across the institution to study and discuss topics of common interest in depth and on a continuing basis. Broadly interdisciplinary, University Seminars are meant to engage faculty with topics that transcend specialization and narrow focus. The structure and enrollment of each seminar is at the discretion of faculty leaders, and may include postdoctoral fellows, research faculty, collaborators from local institutions (like Dartmouth Health, Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory or CRREL, and Northern Stage), and collaborators from other areas. Seminars typically meet during the course of one academic year, starting in the spring or fall, and occur every other week or once a month over a meal. The Office of the Provost will fund a modest budget.

AI and Foreign Language Teaching and Learning

Conveners:

Tania Convertini, Director of the Italian Language Program & Research Assistant Professor of Italian
Roberto Rey Agudo, Director of the Spanish and Portuguese Language Program & Senior Lecturer in Spanish.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping how foreign languages are written, translated, interpreted, and assessed—and, more broadly, how they are learned and taught. This seminar offers a shared space for faculty across languages, literature, and culture to reflect together on the pedagogical, ethical, and curricular implications of AI for foreign language teaching and learning.

Through shared readings, discussion, and invited guests, the seminar creates a collaborative space to engage questions of linguistic diversity, authorship and interpretation, bias and environmental impact, and the redefinition of learning outcomes and assessment in the age of AI. Rather than focusing only on how to use AI, the seminar asks why, when, and to what ends AI should be integrated into our foreign language classrooms and curricula.

The Medieval Seminar

Conveners:

M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, Professor of History
Timothy Baker, Associate Dean of Academic Support & Advising

The Medieval Seminar gathers scholars interested in the premodern world (ca. 300-1700) to discuss work in progress. Our regular members are drawn from the departments of Classics, Religion, History, Art History, French and Italian, German Studies, English, Spanish and Portuguese, Music, the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College Libraries, the Undergraduate Deans Office, and a number of scholars from other regional institutions (Norwich University, Middlebury, UVM, etc.). For over four decades, the seminar has met monthly on the third Wednesday during term (Oct, Nov, Jan, Feb, April, May).

The seminar, which has been meeting in some capacity since the 1960s, is the intellectual hub for the vibrant community of medievalists who are otherwise scattered in different departments. Beyond this, the seminar achieves several things. It offers a forum for its members to get feedback on work-in-progress; it permits attendees to keep current in the work being done in other disciplines; it serves as a meeting point and an organizing principle for the medievalist community at Dartmouth and beyond; and most importantly, it fosters what for many of us is our most important and nourishing intellectual community at the college and elsewhere.

For a list of papers given since 2010, please visit: https://medren.dartmouth.edu/menufeature/events/medieval-seminar

2026-2027 Proposals

University Seminars is accepting proposals for 2026-2027. To submit a proposal for funding consideration, please send the following to Office.of.the.Provost@dartmouth.edu by March 15, 2026.

Description of the topic (1 page): should be broadly interdisciplinary.
Membership (1 page): list the likely participants. Seminars are more likely to be supported if they include a mix of faculty from different career stages as well as from across the institution.
Meeting schedule for the life of the seminar.
Budget (1 page): meals for group meetings, materials, supplies.

Applicants will also be expected to provide a 2-page report at the end of the academic year describing the outcome of the seminar and a list of members.

Please contact Vice Provost for Academic and International Affairs Barbara Will with any questions.

About

Current University Seminars

2026-2027 Proposals