Humanities Endowment Awards $20 Million for 281 New Grants
Awards include 55 We the People projects in U.S. history and culture
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) today announced that 281 successful applicants will receive a total of $20.1 million in grants or offers of matching funds for projects designed to advance research in the humanities, provide high quality public programming in museums and libraries, strengthen and enrich humanities education, preserve our most important cultural resources, and provide greater access to them.
Fifty-five of the successful grants announced today are designated as We the People projects, a special recognition by the NEH for model projects that advance the study, teaching, and understanding of American history and culture.
"The humanities convey important stories of our world, and today's NEH grant recipients are deeply engaged in advancing those stories through new scholarly research, new educational resources, increased efforts to preserve our cultural heritage, and new public programs that engage our minds and broaden our understanding of human history," said NEH Chairman Bruce Cole. "NEH supports projects that are rigorous, wide-ranging, and substantial in their examination and illumination of the great events and great ideas of the past in our own nation and throughout the world."
In this award cycle, scholars and institutions in 39 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico received support from the NEH; three U.S. scholars working in other nations and three U.S. institutions located outside the country also received awards. A complete state-by-state listing of grants is available in four Adobe PDF files, located below. The 281 new NEH grants and matching offers come from four of the Endowment's major program areas-education, preservation and access, public, and research programs-with examples of each:
Ohio to Wisconsin and Scholars Abroad
Programs, total number of projects, and total dollar amounts for grants and offers of matching funds included in this announcement are as follows:
Education Programs (27) $3,272,949 (plus $85,000 in matching offers)
Research Programs (96) $2,223,000 (plus $242,000 in matching offers)
Preservation/Access Projects (41) $10,533,579 (plus $603,294 in matching offers)
Public Programs (116) $3,041,748 (plus ($72,000 in matching offers)
NEH grants are awarded on a competitive basis. Throughout the year, humanities experts outside of the Endowment and members of the National Council on the Humanities consider all applications and advise NEH on the quality and significance of each proposed project.
- Education program awards include Humanities Initiatives for Faculty, which are intended to strengthen and enrich humanities education and scholarship at the three types of Presidentially-designated institutions: Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges and Universities. For example, CUNY, Bronx Community College (The Bronx, N.Y.) will conduct two one-week summer seminars using collections from the Bronx Community College Hall of Fame for Great Americans, Florida International University (Miami, Fla.) will develop new courses and programs on Chinese language and culture, and Xavier University (New Orleans, La.) will develop an archival and oral history of African Americans in segregated Louisiana from 1890-1964. Grants for Teaching and Learning Resources and Curriculum Development support projects that improve specific areas of humanities education and serve as national models of excellence. Stanford University (Stanford, Calif.) will develop online and print tools for teaching intermediate Latin through medieval texts, and the Bill of Rights Institute (Arlington, Va.) will develop a resource book and Web site for high school teachers and students on important Supreme Court cases.
- Preservation and Access awards preserve and create intellectual access to humanities collections. Collections may include books, journals, newspapers, manuscript and archival materials, maps, still and moving images, sound recordings, and objects of art and material culture. For example, Appalshop, Inc. (Whitesburg, Ky.) will catalogue archival records that document their extensive multi-media collections and create new finding aids. Reference material grants support projects that create reference works and research tools that include databases and electronic archives that codify and integrate humanities materials; print and online encyclopedias about various fields in the humanities or about a particular area or subject; historical, etymological, and bilingual dictionaries for undocumented languages, as well as reference grammars and other linguistic tools; tools for spatial analysis and representation of humanities data, such as atlases and geographical information systems (GIS); and descriptive catalogs that provide detailed information about humanities materials. For example, Emory University (Atlanta, Ga.) will complete its electronic database on transatlantic slave voyages by adding 8,000 new entries and enhancing 9,000 others.
- Public programs awards promote lifelong learning for broad public audiences in fields such as history, literature, comparative religion, and philosophy, and other fields of the humanities. They support projects that go beyond the presentation of factual information to encourage thought and conversation about humanities ideas and questions. This new round of NEH awards supports consultation, planning, and implementation for projects at museums and libraries and for collaborative special projects, including an award to Mid-America Arts Alliance (Kansas City, Mo.) for adapting and condensing major NEH-funded museum exhibitions and managing logistical details associated with their travel to smaller museums throughout the nation. Consultation and planning grants for Interpreting America's Historic Places support the interpretation of nationally significant places in the United States by linking the story of those places to central themes and issues in American history, with awards made to Save Ellis Island (Gladstone, N.J.) to plan a permanent exhibit on immigrant health care at the Ellis Island hospital and to Central Missouri State University to develop a Web site drawing together the experiences of Harry S. Truman on the Truman Farm in Grandview, Mo., and the Truman District in nearby Independence.
- Research awards include NEH grants to eight independent research institutions, such as the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research (Jerusalem) and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture (Williamsburg, Va.), to support fellowships for scholarly research. NEH also awarded summer stipends of $5,000 each to 88 scholars who will conduct humanities research for two months, usually between academic semesters.
- Humanities Initiatives at Presidentially Designated Institutions: Historically Black Colleges and Universities (2) $104,981
- Humanities Initiatives at Presidentially Designated Institutions: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (6) $331,667
- Humanities Initiatives at Presidentially Designated Institutions: Tribal Colleges and Universities (1) $75,000
- Teaching and Learning Resources and Curriculum Development (18) $2,761,301 (plus $85,500 in matching offers)
- Fellowship Programs at Independent Research Institutions (8) $1,783,000 (plus $242,000 in matching offers)
- Summer Stipends (88) $440,000
- Preservation and Access (42) $10,583,579 (plus $603,294 in matching offers)
- Grants to Preserve & Create Access to Humanities Collections (1) $50,000
- Grants to Preserve & Create Access to Humanities Collections (1) $50,000
- Preservation/Access Projects (41) $10,533,579 (plus $603,294 in matching offers)
- Interpreting America's Historic Places: Consultation Grants (10) $142,401
- Interpreting America's Historic Places: Planning Grants (5) $147,126 (plus $72,000 in matching offers
- Museums, Libraries, and Special Projects: Consultation Grants (17) $158,592
- Museums, Libraries, and Special Projects: Planning Grants (19) $731,245
- Museums and Libraries: Implementation Grants (2) $1,799,384
- Small grants to Libraries (63) $63,000