Humanities Lab

How to apply

  1. Students should register for an HUL 494 topic that best suits their interests and future goals to ensure they receive a class seat.
  2. After registering, complete an IDS 401 proposal. HUL 494 will not be accepted for IDS 401 without an approved proposal. Your proposal will need to explain thoroughly how your chosen HUL course topic will utilize your academic concentrations. This section should detail how the coursework reflects academic concentration area knowledge. Be sure to discuss specific theories and concepts from courses completed in each academic concentration.  Your proposal should also include what you hope to gain from this experience. Your proposal must be 2-3 pages in length. 
  3. Email your completed proposal to cisainternship@asu.edu by the posted deadline below. 
  4. Once you have been approved by the IDS 401 coordinator, a DARS exception will be placed on your account to substitute HUL 494 for your IDS 401 requirement. NOTE: Applications submitted after the deadline will not be accepted.

What is the Humanities Lab?

The Humanities Lab offers problem-focused, humanities-based but interdisciplinary courses designed to produce a collaborative, exploratory learning experience. To achieve this, Lab courses are organized around questions and sub-questions—Why are there immigrants? How has the automobile shaped American society? What is the best way to feed the world’s population?–rather than around topics or historical periods. Labs are team-taught by faculty from different disciplines and include students of varying ages and disciplinary backgrounds. Students and faculty collaborate to connect the dots between ideas, events, beliefs, images, and data to address grand social challenges in a holistic way from diverse perspectives. At the semester’s end, student teams share their research outcomes and approaches to their Lab’s challenge with varying publics. Students in the Humanities Lab will experience:

  • Challenge-centric courses are team-taught using interdisciplinary, inquiry-based learning strategies.
  • Labs are open to students at diverse levels and from varying disciplinary backgrounds, so Labs span age groups and intellectual interests.
  • University librarians and art faculty usually serve as consultants to Lab courses.
  • Lab teams often work with community organizations and field experts during their inquiry process.
  • Students conduct original research and identify resources that help them address their Lab’s challenge.
  • Students work in teams and address challenges collaboratively.
  • Student teams develop projects and products (videos, presentations, op-ed pieces, art objects, performances, proposals) that enable them to share their learning with appropriate publics.

For a list of upcoming lab topics please visit the Humanities Lab webpage.

What do you mean by ‘Lab’?

Labs (or laboratories) are typically spaces designed for scientific inquiry through collaborative analysis and experimentation to assess and address problems. The Humanities Lab borrows from that design by coordinating research goals and taking shared responsibility for learning outcomes while also developing and utilizing arts and humanities content and methodologies that reveal deeper themes and questions underlying problems. Humanities inquiry moves the investigation from “what?” to “why?” and takes solutions from “what could be done?” to “what should be done?”

Application deadlines

All application materials including the signed electronic documents from your mentor must be received before 4 p.m. Arizona Time on the dates listed below.

SessionsSubmission deadline
Fall B: 10/16/24 – 12/6/24Sept. 23, 2024
Spring A: 1/13/2025 – 3/4/2025Dec. 16, 2024
Spring B: 3/17/2025 – 5/2/2025Feb. 17, 2025
Spring C: 1/13/2025 – 5/2/2025Dec. 16, 2024
Summer A: 5/19/2025 – 6/27/2025April 18, 2025
Summer B: 7/2/2025 – 8/12/2025June 13, 2025 
Summer C: 5/19/2025 – 7/11/2025April 18, 2025