Happening Now! 

Featuring Submissions from The BIG Contest 2023

The Big Contest is back and is open to any UNH or CCSNH student who has a completed a digital project in a Fall ’22 or Spring ’23 course. UNH students taking a COLA course, and/or CCSNH students taking any humanities course were encouraged to submit! 

Amazing digital projects from humanities courses in UNH and the Community College System of New Hampshire took part in this special event. Check out these projects which may:

• explore a similarity or a difference in cultures
• dabble in a second language
• examine a life and its impact on that person’s creative process or achievement?
• explore an ethical question
• examines history to understand the past, or look towards the future
• collects research that contributes to the way we understand the world
• shares insights about fitting into our community or our culture

The Big Contest has will be awarding prizes in the following four categories:

• Breakout Award. This is a contest category that accepts submissions created by a novice at digital composing or specifically in a first-year course.
• Digital Storytelling Award. This is a contest category that seeks submissions that focus on narrative.
• Innovative Design. This is a contest category that values projects that uses digital tools in a creative way.
• Change the World. This contest category requests project that are persuasive in nature and that work to change the world.

Why the humanities?

THE HUGEMANTIES PROJECT IS A UNIQUE GROUP OF INITIATIVES DESIGNED TO INCREASE THE VISIBILITY OF THE HUMANTIES IN THE STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. TOGETHER WITH UNH COLA, THE NEW HAMPSHIRE HUMANITIES COLLABORATIVE, CCSNH, AND FUNDED BY THE ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION, HUGEMANITIES CELEBRATES AND REVEALS HOW THE HUMANITIES CONTRIBUTE TO RESEARCH, INNOVATION, SOCIETY, AND INDUSTRY. OUR SUITE OF INITIATIVES PROVIDE THE OPPORTUNITY TO RECOGNIZE DIGITAL HUMANITIES WORK BY STUDENTS ACROSS THE STATE, WHILE AMPLIFYING THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE HUMANITIES TO OUR GREATER COMMUNITY AND INDUSTRY.

There are two live Initiatives right now, Hype the Humanities and The Big Contest!

Still not sure what the Humanities are or how they fit into the world today?  Here's a brief introduction:

Humanities based knowledge provides a backdrop for exploring and understanding the human experience.  Consider these points from this amazing infographic from 4Humanities.org:

• The humanities help us understand others through their languages, histories and cultures.
• The humanties foster social justice and equality.
• They reveal how people have tried to make moral, spiritual and intellectual sense of the world.
• And they teach empathy.
• The Humanities teach us to deal critically and logically with subjective, complex, imperfect information.
• They teach us to weigh evidence skeptically and consider more than one side of every question.
• Humanities students build skills in writing and critical reading and are getting hired in the fastest growing sectors of the economy.
• The humanities encourage us to think creatively and teach us how to reason about being human and asking questions about our world.
• The humanities develop informed and critical citizens. Without the humanities, democracy could not flourish.

Past HUGEmanities Initiatives: Looking forward to 2022!

The Big Contest recognizes and showcase the incredible work of students in humanities courses, through awards, and also by showcasing winning digital projects on The New Hampshire Humanities Collaborative website. Check out the winners from 2019 & 2020, entries are now open for 2021 (can be any work from a liberal arts class during 2020-21 academic year)

HELM, offered during the summer of 2020, was a straightfoward, highly flexible online educational resource that works to support UNH and CCSNH faculty as they navigate creating curriculum for digital humanities work

The HUGEmanities Project also also offered a valuable apprenticeship opportunity called The Digital Projects Institute, in 2019 where students developed and extended their writing, thinking and digital production skills through in a unique digital apprenticeship

The next HUGEmanities initiative was TinyTalks! The TinyTalk initiative is a series of interviews conducted by Molly Campbell and Krista Jackman. Tiny Talks are designed to explore the BIG question every college students faces early in their education, namely, What can I do with this degree?! Molly and Krista have been interviewing a variety of professionals who started with a degree in the humanities. They will explore the paths these professionals have traveled, starting with their liberal arts degree, and then focusing on the decision making, professional development, and the specific jobs that led each person to their current profession

*Terras, M., Priego, E., Liu, A., Rockwell, G., Sinclair, S., Hensler, C., and Thomas, L. (2013). “The Humanities Matter!” Infographic, 4humanities.org/infographic.