College receives $100,000 NEH grant to complete long-term, global project on Kierkegaard

When Professor Emeritus of History Bruce Kirmmse first set out in 2004 to translate a massive trove of writings by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), he and his colleagues had their work cut out for them. 

Now, after nearly a decade and a half, Kirmmse’s project has entered the final stretch with one last $100,000 grant. Facilitated by a series of six grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities over the years, the international team of scholars Kirmmse has assembled will conclude the final one-year installment of their project, entitled Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, by the fall of 2019. These translations will fill a major vacuum in the study of the philosopher’s unpublished work. 

“These publications remove a major obstacle to Kierkegaard scholarship,” Kirmmse said. “Making the vast bulk of his unpublished writings available to the English-speaking world in a critical, scholarly edition will now create the benchmark for all future Kierkegaard scholarship in the English language.”