The Center for the Humanities at Washington University is dedicated to the promotion of humanistic thinking and scholarly production. The center considers these essential activities in the intellectual, political, creative, and artistic life of the university, the community it serves, and the broader world. To this end, the center offers several undergraduate programs and resources to promote humanities research, including two minors in children’s studies and the medical humanities.

The children’s studies minor combines social science courses that measure and analyze how children mature and how institutions have affected children with courses in the humanities that examine how children are portrayed and constructed in art, literature, and film. The medical humanities minor approaches health, disease and medical care as culturally embedded human experiences that vary across time and place. The Center for the Humanities is also pleased to support the Merle Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellowship Program. Between five and seven sophomores are selected each year for this two-year program on the merit of their original individual research proposals.

In addition to its programming for undergraduate students, the center offers a one-semester Faculty Fellowship Program, designed to provide a supportive environment for innovative, interdisciplinary scholarship and research, and a Graduate Student Fellowship with similar goals. The center also endows several one- and three-year Faculty Seminar Grants and a renewable Reading and Writing Group Grants for tenured or tenure-track faculty and WashU humanities graduate students to create reading groups structured around a particular theme.