Information and Application
Humanities Labs encourage us to move beyond the classroom and embrace the world as an ideal learning space. Museums and archives expand that learning space and offer new experiences, while our community or region can become a "classroom without walls." The lab definition is flexible enough to incorporate a variety of contexts and approaches.
Many Humanities faculty already include in their teaching the observation, hands-on experimentation, and skill-building perspectives that the general public tends to associate with the natural sciences laboratory approach. Through the Humanities Labs program, we now seek to popularize these rewarding practices more broadly across our disciplines, and to draw attention to their use.
The Leslie Center for the Humanities invites applications for course development stipends for Humanities Labs. Successful applicants may receive up to $5,000 for approved course-related expenses. The application for a Humanities Lab course development grant is at the bottom of this page.
Labs must move beyond the traditional classroom experience typically associated with the humanities to involve some combination of experimentation, observation, hands-on learning, creating new knowledge, public dissemination of that knowledge, and creative production. Labs are sometimes divided into the following groups:
- Object-centered: e.g. learning enriched by museum collections;
- Archive-based: e.g. guided research in the library's special collections;
- Social impact projects: e.g. teaching philosophy or arts to children;
- Fieldwork: e.g. on-site history of Native Americans in Maine/N.E.; or
- Arts-centric: e.g. mounting a production in faculty-directed plays, performing in faculty-conducted concerts, or curating a faculty-initiated exhibition.
In the application, you will be asked to complete and upload the budget form available at the bottom of this page and to provide the following:
- Your name, position, and department/program affiliation;
- Proposed title and level of the course;
- Term and year in in which the course will be offered;
- Anticipated enrollment;
- Detailed course description that includes the following:
- Course summary;
- Description of what makes the course a lab;
- Goals and objectives of the course;
- Preliminary list of works or texts;
- Activity such as lectures or presentations by faculty other than yourself;
- Field trips or other activity outside of the classroom;
- The current ORC course description if this will be a modification of an existing course.
- Written agreement or statement of support from any external organization involved in the Humanities Lab aspects of the course (e.g. museum, library, school, etc.);
- Detailed budget;
- List of activity related to the course that will require administrative support.
The deadline for submitting proposals for Humanities Lab grants is May 1 in the spring prior to the academic year in which the course will be taught. Proposals will be reviewed and voted on by the Center's Advisory Committee in the May meeting.
HUMANITIES LAB COURSE DEVELOPMENT GRANT BUDGET WORKSHEET AND APPLICATION
Step 1: Complete the budget worksheet (link below) and save it to your computer. You will be asked to upload it in the application.
Humanities Lab Course Development Grant Budget Worksheet
Step 2: BEFORE you open the application form, please log in to your Dartmouth Google account using your Dartmouth email address.
NOTE: You will not be able to open the form using your personal Google account.
Step 3: AFTER you've logged in to your Dartmouth Google account (step 2 above), click here to open the Humanities Lab Course Development Grant application form.