NEH Announces $16 Million in Awards and Offers for 286 Humanities Projects
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced today $16 million in grant awards and offers for 286 humanities projects. New funding supports a wide variety of projects nationwide, including traveling exhibitions, research fellowships, production and development of films, documentation of endangered languages, the development and staging of major exhibitions, digital tools, and the preservation of and access to historic collections.
This round of grants showcases the reach of the Endowment projects both big and small. Among the grants announced are those that will bring the traveling exhibition Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War and related programs to small towns in Tennessee, South Dakota, and Wyoming, while museums in Utah, Illinois, California, and Maryland will be mounting major exhibitions. New documentaries, on topics ranging from Susan Sontag to Prohibition to slavery, are heading for public television in the near future as well. Other grants will allow scholars to dig through—and digitize—archives.
“NEH grants give scholars the tools they need to do research to expand the knowledge base in various fields of humanities and then provide public access to new knowledge and perspectives through exhibitions, reading-and-discussion programs, websites, and documentaries,” said NEH Chairman Jim Leach. “The result is a better informed public.”
This award cycle, institutions and independent scholars in 44 states and the District of Columbia will receive NEH support. Complete state-by-state listings of grants and offers of matching funds are available through the two links below:
Selected projects have received a We the People designation for their efforts to strengthen the teaching, study, and understanding of American history and culture. In this cycle, grants were awarded in the following categories:
- America’s Historical and Cultural Organizations: Planning Grants and Implementation Grants support projects that create new ways to excite, inform, and stir thoughtful reflection upon culture, identity, and history in creative and new ways.
- America’s Media Makers: Development Grants enable media producers to collaborate with scholars to develop humanities content and to prepare programs for production.
- America’s Media Makers: Production Grants support the preparation of a media program for distribution.
- Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants encourage innovations in the digital humanities by supporting the planning stages of projects.
- Documenting Endangered Languages Grants support fieldwork and other activities relevant to recording, documenting, and archiving endangered languages. This is a joint program with the National Science Foundation.
- Enduring Questions Grants allow faculty members to develop a new undergraduate course that grapple with a fundamental question addressed by the humanities.
- Fellowship Programs at Independent Research Institutions provide scholars with research time and access to resources that might not be available at their home institutions.
- Fellowships at Digital Humanities Centers Grants support collaboration between digital centers and individual scholars, providing funding for both a stipend for the fellow and a portion of the center’s costs for hosting a fellow.
- Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Grants allows institutions to preserve and provide access to collections essential to scholarship, education, and public programming in the humanities.
- Interpreting America’s Historic Places: Planning Grants and Implementation Grants support the interpretation of a single historic site or house, a series of sites, an entire neighborhood, a town or community, or a larger geographical region significant to American history.
- NEH on the Road Grants help small sites defray the cost of hosting an NEH-traveling exhibition.
- Picturing America School Collaboration Projects Grants provide teachers and librarians whose schools display Picturing America images to incorporate them into the school’s core curriculum.
- Preservation and Access Research and Development Grants support projects that address major challenges in preserving or providing access to humanities collections and resources.
- Small Grants to Libraries—Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War Grants allow institutions hosting the 1,000-square foot panel exhibition to offer related public programming.
- Summer Stipends support full-time work by a scholar on a humanities project for a period of two months.