UMKC School of Humanities and Social Sciences

10/22/2026

The Dean's Office is seeking a new Student Engagement Intern for the spring semester! The primary function of this position is to help gather, curate and spotlight our students’ experiences on social media and other online and print media. The ideal candidate is creative, outgoing and excited to try new things and meet new people. Experience with photography, social media and/or graphic design would be helpful but not required!

The deadline to apply is Friday, Oct. 30. This internship is hosted by the Mellon Humanities Internship Program. Apply with the link in the comments below.

10/14/2026

UMKC History department faculty took students on a tour of the Berlin Wall exhibit at Union Station!

10/08/2026

Did you know that Roos of all kinds are producing their own podcasts? Students, faculty and alumni are putting their voice to the mic and sharing their voices. Students in any major can even earn a podcasting certificate and learn how to take a podcast from concept to production.

Learn more: https://www.umkc.edu/news/posts/2026/october/discover-podcasts-created-by-umkc-faculty-alumni-and-students.html

10/07/2026

Join us for our next Marilyn T. and Byron C. Shutz Lecture with Radu Vancu, a prominent Romanian poet and public intellectual, titled "A Defense of Beauty."

Beauty in art has always seemed suspicious, especially when it depicts tragic events: why write about all these human atrocities in such hypnotic words? Nevertheless, human beings quite often feel the need to resort to writing, singing or painting when they find themselves in the core of an inferno.

The lecture will feature a Q&A moderated by Paula and Cyrus Console-Soican, translators of Vancu's book The Rope in Bloom (Chicago University Press, 2026).

Register to attend this free lecture:
https://www.facebook.com/share/19RLRiq11n/

10/06/2026

Assistant professor of economics Kabeer Bora recently published "The Political Economy of Stagnation: Salariat Formation, Class Location, and the Inhibition of Capital Accumulation in Assam" in the Review of Radical Political Economics.

Kabeer's paper asks why Assam, a resource-rich state in northeast India, fell from a per capita income above the national average at independence to roughly 45 percent below it by the late 1990s. He locates the cause in the region's class structure rather than in geography or political conflict: a salaried professional class whose livelihood depends on state patronage, formed when precolonial labor obligations under the Ahom kingdom were absorbed into British colonial administration. The paper reads Assam's sons-of-the-soil movements as the defense of a monopoly over public employment, and traces the fiscal result — salaries, pensions and interest payments now absorb 57 percent of the state's revenue.

Read the paper here: https://doi.org/10.1177/04866134261488884

10/05/2026

The morning after his Schutz lecture, film director, songwriter and rapper Boots Riley took some time after his screening of "I Love Boosters" to have breakfast with some of our students!

09/28/2026

Greg Vonnahme, associate professor of political science, partnered with UMKC students Sahar Faizan and Sarah Johnson to research claims being made about Missouri Amendment 4 in the lead-up to the August 4 primary election. Check out their Op-Ed in The Kansas City Star:

Political scientists at UMKC looked at whether a yes vote would affect politics in the state. Their conclusions were surprising. | Opinion

09/24/2026

Did you spot Professor Diane Mutti Burke during Chancellor Agrawal's State of the University? She was featured as part of the UMKC Big Leap!

09/23/2026

We welcomed acclaimed filmmaker Boots Riley to Screenland Theater last week as part of our Schutz Lecture Series.

The lecture included a showing of Riley's most recent film, "I Love Boosters." The film is an electric, mind-bending odyssey through the world of high-fashion and low-rent economies. It focuses on how women of color work together to remake the work in their image. While stories centering women of color often veer toward the pained and anguished, "I Love Boosters" instead saw a grand struggle that is, in their hands, as whimsical as it is revolutionary.

“It’s about loneliness and overcoming loneliness,” Riley says of his film. “And it’s about connection: the ways that people connect with each other, the ways that people feel a part of the world, and how some may look for that connection through something creative, or through other ways.”

09/22/2026

Join the Kansas City Public Library and UMKC for the 11th annual Writers for Readers, an inspiring evening that brings nationally renowned authors to Kansas City while directly supporting access to creative writing and literacy education across our community.

We are honored to welcome Joyce Carol Oates, one of the most prolific writers of our time. Through a live, engaging conversation, guests will experience an unforgettable literary event while investing in the power of storytelling.

Proceeds benefit an ongoing partnership between the Kansas City Public Library and our MFA program in creative writing and media arts, funding graduate internships for students who support the Maya Angelou Book Award and teach free writing classes at library locations.

Register here: https://kclibrary.org/donate/wfr