At the center, we support the humanities graduate students of today as they find audiences for their work, both within and beyond academia, and plot careers both within and beyond the professoriate. We foster writing and collaborative communities crucial to the development of research that speaks across disciplines and draws on an array of methods. As a non-departmental unit supporting the humanities as a whole, we seek to connect graduate students with opportunities to do public-facing humanities work and to use their doctoral training in a variety of contexts.
For Students
Workshops for Graduate Students
Check this page for a continuously updated list of the humanities center’s periodic workshop offerings, both standalone and tied to the center’s events, for graduate students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. Various deadlines; check website.
RDE Mini Grants
RDE mini grants offer current humanities graduate students the opportunity — via course-based initiatives in graduate student teaching, events, programs and projects — to develop pedagogy and programs that will hone RDE-relevant skills and experience, and/or to foster dialogues and communities of practice centered around the evolving needs of humanities graduate students.
Graduate Student Fellowship
WashU graduate students writing dissertations in humanities disciplines spend a semester in residence with the humanities center during which they participate in the center’s intensive, interdisciplinary intellectual environment. Applications are due annually in April.
Divided City Graduate Summer Research Fellowship
With the support of the Here and Next initiative, a program of the Office of the Provost, this fellowship encourages interdisciplinary connections among graduate students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences, art, architecture, urban design and landscape architecture while funding two months of research on how segregation has and continues to play out as a set of spatial practices in cities, neighborhoods and public spaces. Applications are due annually in April.
Reading and Writing Groups
The Center for the Humanities offers grants to tenured, tenure-track or teaching Washington University faculty in the humanities and humanistic social sciences and to Washington University humanities graduate students to support reading and writing groups on a particular subject or theme. The groups are self-organized by the participants, have an ongoing core membership and meet regularly throughout the academic year. Applications are due annually in February.
Studiolab Courses
The humanities studiolab draws inspiration from both the studio and laboratory as pedagogical spaces, organized around a theme or problem for a sustained period. In addition to work on the central topic, members of the studiolab community incorporate and develop capacities, beyond specific disciplinary skills, essential to success within and beyond academia: competency with digital and other media, collaboration, project management, communication with multiple audiences and oral presentation.
Mentored Professional Experience (MPE)
The Center for the Humanities is a participating unit in Arts & Sciences’ Office of Graduate Studies Mentored Professional Experience (MPE) program. Working with their staff mentors, students completing MPEs in the humanities center develop projects that engage with humanities impact reporting, project management, symposium and event planning, humanities program research and development, grant writing and/or community engagement. The center is offering three MPEs for spring 2025: Graduate Mentor, Banned Books Undergraduate Research Fellowship; Graduate Mentor, Environmental Humanities Undergraduate Research Group; and Humanities Digital Communications. Check website for descriptions and instructions.
NEH Humanities@Work Internship Program
More to come on this new program!
Center for the Humanities awarded NEH grant for humanities graduate student internship program
‘Humanities at Work’: Center for the Humanities wins NEH grant to support graduate internships
