Call For Papers | Humanities Undergraduate Research Symposium

Humanities Undergraduate Research Symposium: Call For Papers

Conference on Friday, April 4, 2025.

Proposals due Sunday, March 14, 2025.

Have you written an excellent paper for a course that you wish had wider recognition? Do you have an idea that excites you but hasn’t yet been fully explored? Do you want to gain experience in public speaking? Most importantly, do you want to deepen your understanding of the major problems and questions you encounter everyday?

The Humanities Undergraduate Research Symposium (HURS) celebrates the contributions of our undergraduate students to an ever-evolving dialogue of thought by providing a platform to share new knowledge and encourage pursuing more advanced research.

We welcome submissions from any discipline in the arts and humanities. We invite 200–300-word essay abstracts on projects, which may include research papers, poetry, short video screenings, and artistic and musical performances. On panels, each panelist will deliver a 10-15 minute presentation, panelists will provide responses and ask questions to their fellow panelists, and audience members will engage with panelists in open dialogues.

We are looking for applicants who expect to have accomplished humanities research in their coursework or individual projects by March 1, 2024. We invite ALL interested to submit their work and attend, no matter their major(s), so long as the abstract in question concerns humanities-related themes. Both the abstract and research should be understandable by academics beyond the specific discipline of your research. Students from all UConn campuses are welcome. We encourage submissions from works in progress as well as finished papers.

We are especially interested in papers addressing the following themes, but authors are not limited to these themes:

Art, Attention, and Media
- Examples of presentations may include:
  - Art and music, composition, dance
  - Multimedia, graphic design, and digital humanities (journalism)
  - The future of humanities
  - Filmmaking and documentary
Literature and Storytelling
- Examples of presentations may include:
  - Or literary forms and genres (or literary forms and narrative)
  - Poetry and prose (researching historic poetry or prose or exploring researched themes through original poetry or prose)
Collective Memory, Social Movements, and the Political Landscape
- Examples of presentations may include:
  - Public history
  - History, memory, and politics
  - Activism
  - Social media and technology
Environment, Place, and Legacy
- Examples of presentations may include:
  - Sustainability, innovations, technology, the future
  - Migration, environmental justice, geographic borders
  - Nature writing and environmental appreciation
Radical Imagination and Futurism
- Examples of presentations may include:
  - Afrofuturism, radical imagining
  - Artificial Intelligence, Scientific and Humanities Innovations
  - Literary analysis
  - Artistic creations

Fields/disciplines under discussion may include, but are not limited to:

Africana Studies
American Sign Language Studies
American Studies
Anthropology
Arabic and Islamic Civilizations
Asian and Asian American Studies
Art History
Chinese
Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies
English
French
German
History
Human Rights
Individualized Majors
Italian Literary and Cultural Studies
Journalism
Judaic Studies
Latino and Latin American Studies
Languages, Cultures, and Literatures
Maritime Studies
Philosophy
Spanish
Urban and Community Studies
Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Abstract submissions are due by March 14, 2025. Please include the following as a .pdf in an email to hurs@uconn.edu with the subject line: [FULL NAME]: TITLE OF PRESENTATION.

First name, last name, pronouns
UConn email, NetID
Major(s), minor(s), concentration(s), graduation
Campus, faculty mentor
Abstract
Theme
Availability on April 4, 2025
Yes or no: Consent to recording, consent to distributing, and consent to live-streaming