July 2009

Bookmark it! There is a lot of information on the Federal/State Partnership website

NEH website features council programs

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The Vinh Le family of Garden City, Kansas. This portrait was part of the “Starting Over, Staying On: Southeast Asian Citizens in Garden City, Kansas” exhibition at the Finney County Historical Society in Garden City.

At the July 24 meeting of the National Council on the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities launched new pages of its website which feature grant projects [3]. Each division and office has a feature project as well as projects that are representative of the work supported by each grant program.

The Connecticut Humanities Council's "An Orderly and Decent Government [4]" [5] is one of nine council programs featured on Federal/State Partnership [6]'s pages. Other Federal/State Partnership highlights are the California Council for the Humanities [7]' "We Are California" [8] program, the Illinois Humanities Council's “Future Perfect: Conversations on the Meaning of the Genetics Revolution,” [9] the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities' "Humanities Feature Bureau," [10] the Kansas Humanities Council's "Kansans Tell Their Stories" [11] series, and Humanities Texas' teacher institutes [12].

Three other divisions and offices used council projects to exemplify their finest work. The Office of Digital Humanities [13] focused on the Connecticut Humanities Council's "Connecticut's Heritage ECHOsystem: Resolving the Challenges to Interoperability Across Disparate Digital Repositories" to demonstrate work done by Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants; the Division of Education Programs [14] drew on the Florida Humanities Council's Landmarks of American History and Culture: Workshops for School Teachers on Zora Neale Hurston, "Jump at the Sun: Zora Neale Hurston and Her Eatonville Roots"; and the Division of Public Programs [15] focused on the Maine Humanities Council's "Humanities at the Heart of Health Care: Across New England and Beyond."

Bookmark it! There is a lot of information on the Federal/State Partnership website

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login: fedstate — password: partnership
 

The Federal/State Partnership website is a resource for executives, boards, and staff of state humanities councils. All the documents and information you could want from Federal/State Partnership are available for perusal and download at your convenience.

Join the Federal/State Partnership email list from the first page of the website [17].

Find out what councils are doing: the 2009 Compliance Report Data has been compiled

Symposia, awards, media, book discussion—state humanities councils are doing them all. Place your council in the context of the kinds of work other councils are doing and looks at the numbers of people who are participating in council programming.

These data will be used to help Federal/State Partnership tell others about the work of state humanities councils. The 2009 data will be an essential part, for instance, of the 2011 budget narratives.

>> read more [18] about a lot on the Federal/State Partnership website

Please let educators in your state know: there's still time to attend a Picturing America School Collaboration Workshop

Picturing America conferences [19] provide opportunities for educators who have already received the Picturing America images to

• observe models for teaching American art, history, and culture with the Picturing America portfolio and accompanying Teachers Resource Book;
• explore the value of visual literacy for subjects in the core curriculum; and
• develop individual or team teaching plans.

Four conferences will be held between February and June 2010. For more information about programs, dates, and eligibility, visit the links below.

• Newberry Library, Chicago, IL [20]
  “Interpreting the American Landscape”
  April 16-17, 2010
• Newark Museum, Newark, NJ [21]
  “Young America”
  February 10-13, 2010
  “Towards Modern America”
  April 21-24, 2010
  “Modern and Contemporary America”
  June 23-26, 2010

Teachers and librarians may apply to more than one conference, but, if accepted, may attend only one.

National Book Festival on the National Mall, September 26

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Poster of the 2009 National Book Festival

The Library of Congress has announced that President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are the Honorary Chairs of the 2009 National Book Festival.

The featured authors include David Baldacci, John Grisham, John Irving, Julia Alvarez, Judy Blume, Ken Burns, Gwen Ifill and Jodi Picoult—as well as celebrity chef Paula Deen.

The literary genres covered are children, mysteries & thrillers, history & biography, teens & children, fiction & fantasy, and poetry & prose.

>> read more [23]