Finding a place to disseminate your work is the final key step in any scholarly or creative project. Now, thanks to the work of Alexa Sand and others, CURAH maintains a sortable database of undergraduate presentation opportunities in the Arts & Humanities. We have tagged conferences by region, by date, and by approximate deadline, with web addresses to provide more information. Many of these conferences have undergraduate awards. If you find an interesting conference, read the call for papers (CFP) carefully, and consider using CURAH’s excellent advice on preparing a conference abstract. Finding a local conference can reduce your travel costs; if you’re not sure how to fund your travel, consider applying for one of CURAH’s student travel awards.
New opportunities are constantly being added. If you know of a conference in your field that invites posters or presentations from undergraduates, please let us know.
Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honor society, will be accepting paper and roundtable submissions between September 30 and October 28 for its next annual international convention, to be held in Las Vegas, NV, March 25–28, 2020. More information on the convention theme, submission guidelines, and eligibility requirements is available at the convention website.
The Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University has invited paper proposals for the 2020 International Congress on Medieval Studies, which will include sessions for undergraduate papers. The conference will be held May 7–10, on the WMU campus. Information about submissions, which are due by September 15, is available on the conference website.
September 13th is the deadline for proposed posters on the topic of music teaching and learning. Top-scoring poster creators will be invited to give a presentation. The conference is in January. Please see the FMEA website for more information. As you plan, you may avail yourself of the CURAH resources on writing an abstract and making a poster.
Loyola University’s History Graduate Student Association’s annual one-day conference (in Chicago on November 2) welcomes undergraduate poster submissions with a deadline of September 6. The theme of the conference is “Conscience-Driven History: Challenging Pasts, Public Spaces, and Memory.”
We are calling for nominations for our 2nd annual Arts and Humanities Faculty Mentor Award, honoring exemplary faculty mentors of undergraduate researchers in our fields. The award carries a $1,000 prize along with public recognition by CUR. The nomination process is being handled by the national office. In brief, here’s how it will work. All CUR members with at least five years of post-grad teaching in the arts or humanities are eligible.
Phase I: A letter of nomination from an appropriate administrator (President, Provost, etc.) plus a 3 page CV for the candidate — No self nomination permitted and only one nominee per campus. The Phase I deadline is November 8, 2019. Finalists will be notified by December 20.
Phase II: Finalists from Phase I will submit a five page personal narrative and two recommendation letters from current or former undergraduate student mentees. The Phase II deadline is February 21, 2020. The winner will hear by the end of March, 2020.
September 19 is the 2019 deadline for applications to the only NEH grant that specifically requires undergraduate research: the Humanities Connections Grant (there are two versions: planning and implementation). Inaugurated in 2016, the NEH Humanities Connections grants support collaborative curricular projects and programs involving different departments at the same institution. They also must “incorporate meaningful student engagement activities such as undergraduate research projects.” Now is the perfect time to begin planning an application for next year. And if you’re in the final stages of a proposal for this year, you might appreciate these insights from CURAH councilor Amy Woodbury Tease (Norwich University) about her current NEH grant: Developing an Interdisciplinary Curriculum to Foster Citizen Scholars.
(Optional) Documentation of work when appropriate, limit to five images as a single PDF, especially for sessions in which artists might discuss their own practice.
CUR’s annual business meeting concluded last week at the Ohio University. Councilors welcomed new members, elected a new set of officers, and basked in the division’s achievements during the year including two new awards for students and faculty, a substantial endowment (to which you can donate), the Volunteer-of-the-Year award for our beloved outgoing chair, Maria Iacullo-Bird, and a shoutout from the CUR President for this very blog and website.
New Councilors
New councilors present at the meeting include Debra Bourdeau (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University), David García (Carthage College), and Diana McClintock (Kennesaw State University). Check out their biographies on our councilor page.
Awards débuted in 2018/19
CURAH takes great pride in two new awards in the past year, the Trimmer Travel Award for undergraduates, and the Arts & Humanities Mentor Award. Details for future applications are available on our award page. Behind these two awards lies endowed funding, and CURAH now has the largest endowment of any CUR division… by far. If you would like, you too can donate to the work of the division.
New officers
CURAH’s new chair is Alexa Sand (Utah State University); the vice-chair is Ian F. MacInnes (Albion College), and the secretary is Michelle Hayford (University of Dayton).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This year’s Trimmer Travel Award winner is Olivia Reyes, a Global Art and Visual Culture Major at the University of Central Oklahoma. Reyes presented at the 2nd World Congress on Undergraduate Research at the University of Oldenburg. She analyzed Cuban, Polish, and American posters advertising the two American films, George C. Scott’s Rage (1972), and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972). CURAH caught up with Reyes and asked her how it went. Here is what she told us.
CURAH Chair Maria Iacullo-Bird congratulates Olivia Reyes.
Olivia Reyes reflects on her experiences
It is difficult to fully describe the value of my 2nd World Congress on Undergraduate Research experience. Nowhere else have I had the opportunity to work and collaborate with colleagues and scholars from across the globe. In addition to attending excellent keynote speakers like Dr. Lujendra Ojha, Dr. Anne Dippel, and Dr. Sonia Fizek, I also attended presentations by my undergraduate colleagues. There was such a strong emphasis on global relationships and the need for international cooperation, something that I felt we were all actively a part of in those moments.
My own presentation, a poster exploring the cross-culture development of visual languages during the Cold War through Polish, Cuban, and American film posters, was integral part of my experience. This project was the result of close to four years of work, and to be able to explore it with my international colleagues and scholars from a variety of disciplines was invaluable. I believe my research was well received, and I acquired many incites on the possibilities of traveling abroad once again to continue my research, as well as various ways to expand the research itself even further.
Cuban poster for George C. Scott’s Rage (1972)
Another truly valuable part of my experience was the chance to network with other researchers and scholars. I particularly enjoyed the “communications” thematic session. Each of us came from a wide variety of disciplines but found ways to incorporate our own knowledge and ideas into one project. Going off the idea of a colleague from South Africa, we developed a series of research questions and ideas for the development of a baby monitoring device for deaf parents, one that would be as affordable as possible for people worldwide. I am proud of what we accomplished during that short time, and I hope I have the chance to work with these colleagues in the future!
It is often said that we live in an increasingly global community, and indeed, in order to tackle global issues it is more important than ever to connect with colleagues from a variety of disciplines and from around the world. I believe the 2nd World Congress on Undergraduate Research was the first of opportunity of many for my colleagues and myself to be a part of that global dialogue. I am truly honored to have attended such an event, and I am grateful to have received the Trimmer Travel Award.
