CUR defines undergraduate research as “An inquiry or investigation … that makes an original intellectual or creative contribution to the discipline.” In the arts, students can start small and build up to larger and more significant contributions over time. But the CUR definition can seem like a high bar in the humanities, with its traditional focus on monographs and major peer-reviewed articles as the only possible outcome. It’s easy to get in the habit of thinking that undergraduate contributions are appropriate only for upper division students in long independent summer projects. Thankfully, there are an increasing number of options that allow students to do appropriately sized original work in the humanities, work that can be integrated even into lower division classes. Here are some paths CUR members have taken.

1. Exhibits on campus or in the community

   Curating exhibits is genuine research work that allows students to work collaboratively, engage the community, and practice public humanities scholarship. Planning and mounting exhibitions can be resource and time intensive, but students tend to embrace the challenge — the public venue inspires them to do their best work. Several models for curatorial work are discussed in this CUR Quarterly essay by Alexa Sand, Becky Thoms, Darcy Pumphrey, Erin Davis, and Joyce Kinkead of Utah State University, where the university’s library and art museum have often been the venues for student curatorial projects, and where the expertise of the library and museum staff are a critical factor.

2. Collaborative contributions to major digital humanities sites

   Becoming a member of a scholarly community online gives students a sense that their voices count, and that they have a responsibility to a much broader audience than just their classmates and professor. Crowdsourced or “citizen driven” humanities projects range from historical mapping of microregions to massive data transcription and translation projects (for example, deciphering Mayan glyphs). Student-scholars can make valuable contributions in these areas and get feedback not only from their immediate community, but from the global network of scholars at all levels engaged in the project. For more on citizen humanists, see this report on a recent international conference held in London. To find citizen humanities projects that might match your course content, check out Zooniverse, a portal site that links you up to “people-powered research” in virtually every field.

3. Manuscript Transcription

   In the last five years, libraries have begun making large numbers of early manuscripts available as high-quality digital images, but the content of those manuscripts is still largely a mystery. In response, several organizations have begun crowdsourcing manuscript transcription, either anonymously, as in the zooniverse-curated Shakespeare’s World or more intentionally, as in EMMO or EMROC.  Teaching undergraduates to transcribe is a powerful classroom tool. It encourages students to develop a detailed and analytical approach to language, it helps them understand what collaboration means in the humanities context, and it encourages them to think about how texts come to exist. To transcribe effectively students must learn basic research skills in the humanities and develop a sensitivity to culture and history.

4. Curating/cataloguing collections

   Most college and university libraries have a few individual collections that are only loosely described, from boxes of unlabeled photographic plates to eclectic family archives. Having undergraduates work with librarians to describe and effectively catalog material relevant to your course content can be an exciting way of introducing students to some of the hardest but most rewarding work of the humanities, work that must be done before any more complex public-facing exhibition or analysis is possible.

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