A Conversation About Humanities Labs

The Colby College Center for the Arts and Humanities engages students through events, grants, internships, and even the curriculum. With an innovative program of Humanities Labs, we aim to preserve the intrinsic benefits of humanistic studies, but also to enhance experiential learning by incorporating observation, hands-on experimentation, and skill-building practices more commonly associated with the natural sciences. Courses across the humanistic disciplines turn museums, archives, and locations on and off campus into laboratories. What are the costs and benefits of adding these new elements to traditional pedagogy in the humanities? Do Humanities Labs offer a way forward?