Eugene Lang College Dean Stephanie Browner Awarded National Endowment for the Humanities Grant

The Internet has the capacity to store millions of digitized books, making rare and out-of-print texts available to people around the world. But this information can be lost if no one maintains the content and server. Print, despite its physical and space limitations, lasts as long as books are shelved somewhere. Stephanie Browner, Dean of Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School, understands the importance of both digital and print media for the preservation of literature and recently received a grant for her work in this area from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

In August, Browner was awarded $206,330 by the NEH to prepare a two-volume scholarly print edition of all known short stories by African-American writer Charles W. Chesnutt. She is also part of a project, supported by a $292,627 NEH grant, to redesign the Charles Chesnutt Digital Archive. “The NEH’s low acceptance rate, and peer review process, makes its support for a scholarly print edition especially meaningful,”  says Browner. “Print and digital are both important for preservation and dissemination of an author’s work. Digital has a wider reach; and print editions typically offer more scholarly content.”