Explore Something Meaningful

The Center for the Humanities invites students to see themselves as researchers that are essential members of a broader intellectual community. We seek to provide the kinds of mentoring, experiential learning, and professional development opportunities that help students to deepen their curiosity, activate their creativity, and develop broad research, project management, and strategic communication skills to address our most pressing global challenges.

Level up your research.

Humanities Symposium

Each year, the Humanities Symposium brings together undergraduate researchers across disciplines for a series of presentations and panels during Show Me Research Week. Emerging scholars share their original research in dialogue with faculty mentors, community members, and fellow student scholars across the arts and sciences. Keynote presentations from leading faculty scholars afford attendees the opportunity to engage with cutting-edge research in the humanities and fine arts. Proposals are typically due in March. Interested in presenting?

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Audience in a lecture hall, with a man holding a microphone asking a question. Attendees appear engaged, seated in rows, with a warm, focused atmosphere.

Make your mark.

Become a Researcher

Labs aren’t the only place where student research happens at MU. We need more curious, committed people like you to engage in high-impact humanities research. Discover opportunities for independent research, collaborate on a research team, and publish or present your work. 

Undergraduate Opportunities
Students collaborating on campus.

Find your people

Study the Humanities at MU

Do you often find that your small question always leads to a thousand bigger questions? Do you enjoy thinking deeply about popular culture, literature, history, language, and art and their impact on individuals and cultures? The humanities at MU is a supportive intellectual community where we indulge curiosity, find big answers to big questions, and hone critical thinking and strategic communication skills that you can use to improve the world in whatever career you choose.

Discover Humanities Majors
Hands-on learning of students and faculty

Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CURE)

Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences focus on support for the development of undergraduate courses organized around faculty-led research projects in the humanities. Faculty chosen from each core humanities department will receive a small course development grant in the summer. Faculty will propose a newly designed course (ideally using an existing course number) in their discipline that dovetails with their research and provides undergraduates with an opportunity to do original research. Faculty are encouraged to have students work with primary source documents or objects of material culture and to make use of local archives and collections, such as the State Historical Society, the Museum of Anthropology, the Museum of Art and Archaeology, or MU’s Special Collections and University Archives.

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