Opportunities for undergraduates to present alongside faculty are rare in the humanities, but the Humanities Education and Research Association (HERA) is notable exception. Their annual conference welcomes “educators at all levels… including undergraduate/graduate students.” Best of all, HERA sponsors a $1,000 prize for undergraduate research. The prize goes to the best undergraduate paper at its annual conference. HERA also gives a smaller award to the student’s attending faculty mentor.

The 2019 conference is in Philadelphia, March 6-9. Its theme is “Highbrow, Lowbrow, Nobrow: Research and Aesthetic Values in the Humanities.” But HERA encourages participants to interpret their theme as widely as possible. The deadline for proposals (150-200 words) is January 25, 2019.

Last year’s prize for undergraduate research went to Leann Christopherson from San Francisco State University for her paper, “‘Everything was a Pretext to Arrest us’: Communicating Intersectionality through Transgressing Literary Borders in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.” Her faculty mentor is SFSU English Professor Sarina Cannon.

More information is available from HERA’s conference page on their website. If you are a student interested in submitting your work, you should check out CURAH’s guide to writing an abstract.

Do you have information about an undergraduate conference opportunity or a prize for undergraduate research in your area? Let us know using the comments or by direct email to the editorial team.